Hidden

I found this excerpt from an essay about my first time in Burma, the first time a whiplash gave me a new perspective of reality:


In a restaurant nestled into the side of a city street, we loafed. The sky swirled warm yellows and oranges as the sun set on the smoggy city. A warm, moist smell of humanity wafted through the air, swirled by the bustling street. We glimpsed foreign, tan, Burmese faces rushing by glimpsing our foreign, white, American faces.


We pointed to the menu and over-pronounced dishes to the waiters. Eventually, they understood. Skewered meat began to pile the table.


As I swallowed course after course, I felt eyes tracing my every mouthful. I turned. There, edging closer, were two giant, eager brown eyes atop a sickly body mangled by hunger. Barely breaking five years old, her focus alternated between my plate and my face. Our eyes met. My heart shattered. Her hollow cheeks were robbed of all liveliness that usually accompanies childhood.


Cold, torn, wrenched. My body contorts from the new empathic blood coursing.

Childhood poverty is the mule bearing the world’s mistakes. As sponges, they absorb the wrongdoings of parents, society, government. They take the hit for unemployment spikes, failings of education, poor healthcare with no defense or retaliation. And then they grow up.

Kate McDonough

University of Virginia (UVA '18)