{"id":252961,"date":"2024-01-29T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2024-01-29T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=252961"},"modified":"2024-01-25T03:37:24","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T03:37:24","slug":"letter-to-the-friend-i-never-met","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/01\/letter-to-the-friend-i-never-met\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to the Friend I Never Met"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dear friend I never met,<br \/>\nFor you were taken too soon<br \/>\nDeprived of humanitarian aid<br \/>\nYou were<br \/>\nForcefully displaced and indiscriminately carpet-bombed<br \/>\nIntentionally injured and violated<br \/>\nPurposely starved and dehydrated<br \/>\nEffectively effaced\u00a0from this Earth\u00a0along with cultural institutions and memory<\/p>\n<p>Dear friend,<br \/>\nDo you feel relief knowing you are free from the threats and terrors of heartless humankind?<br \/>\nOr mostly anger?<br \/>\nDo you pity my helplessness from up above?<br \/>\nOr scorn my paralyzed inaction down below?<\/p>\n<p>Dear friend I never met,<br \/>\nSometimes, I envy you<br \/>\nFor my mind cannot rest<br \/>\nOverwhelmed by guilt, overcome by my fear of the cruel elite and by despair at the apathy and despondency of the masses<\/p>\n<p>Dear friend,<br \/>\nSooner or later<br \/>\nWe are destined to unite<br \/>\nAnd I hope you meet an empowered me<br \/>\nA me who spoke up, who stood for something<br \/>\nA me who embodied peace<br \/>\nNot one who continued to idly watch unfold<br \/>\nThe harsh and senseless reality of daily shell blasts and sirens<br \/>\nScreams and wounds, humiliation and indignity<\/p>\n<p>Dear friend,<br \/>\nI want you to meet a better me<br \/>\n_______________________________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Jocelyn-Wright-e1682745046286.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-234364\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Jocelyn-Wright-e1682745046286.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"132\" \/><\/a>Jocelyn Wright is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Mokpo National University, South Korea, where she has served for over 15 years. Her main areas of\u00a0academic\u00a0interest are peace linguistics, peace literature, and peace\u00a0language\u00a0education. Email:\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:jocelynmnu@yahoo.com\">jocelynmnu@yahoo.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear friend I never met,<br \/>\nFor you were taken too soon<br \/>\nDeprived of humanitarian aid<br \/>\nYou were<br \/>\nForcefully displaced and indiscriminately carpet-bombed&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":234364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[868],"class_list":["post-252961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252962,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252961\/revisions\/252962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}