My Family’s Comfort is Criminal

Your quiet is comfortable                       it’s safe
Quiet means folks can do what
my family did                                             for years
Brush ugly under the carpet
‘cause that’s where quiet & ugly                  like to hide
and we gotta keep pretending there is         zero
dysfunction in our home

quiet hangs out on a street called                      conformity
always lurking around me, inviting me to a place
called loneliness

lemme tell you a little secret about your                       quiet
it didn’t keep me safe from harm
instead it did the opposite of protecting me

quiet kept my fear company, like best                       friends
holding each other’s darkest secrets                     tightly wrapped
hermetically sealed to prevent spoiling, to ensure
its preservation for how ever many decades                  necessary
to keep quiet is to ensure the lie continues
it is to maintain appearances at all costs

you allow yourselves the luxury of quiet and              comfort
so you don’t have to confront your own                       hideousness
and hold yourselves accountable

for the crime of what your quiet
did to me

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Lola Rosario is a Puerto Rican spoken word poet, freelance journalist, and translator from New York City. Her first poetry collection, Daughter de Borikén (Editorial Pulpo) was released in August 2024. Her poemas are featured in The Acentos Review, Thin Air Magazine, La Libreta.online, Angel City Review, Hound Magazine, En La Masmédula (Mexico), and Diario Siglo XXI (Spain). Lola's social justice journalism is found in Prism Reports, NACLA, HipLatina, Green Left (Australia), Latina Media, and Palabra, among others. Lola lives in the picturesque coastal town of Loíza, in her ancestral motherland of Borikén.