When the War is Over, I Will Still Be Here by C.J. Anderson-Wu

Do you hear the deafening choirs behind the walls? I do. I won’t fall asleep until I hear them. Every night they are the music replacing the memories of cries, screams, and wailing I heard before being moved here. The music assures me there are many people like me, at unknown corners all over the world, who never stopped relaying our dreams.

I am here because I wrote an anti-war poem and recited it at the foot of the Pushkin Monument infront of a small gathering. Later that night, four masked men in black uniforms broke into my apartment, beat me, carried me out, and threw me into their vehicle.

I am waiting for my sentence. I can't recall if I had undergone any trial. The regime never bothered.

How violent could a poem be? How much hatred could my poem incite? How could I threaten violence by being against the “special military operation” launched by the single decision-maker?

Over the past months, during sleepless nights, I recalled stories I heard in my youth. There were people put in jail by protesting against the junta while others were exiled by standing against state terrorism. Some were confined by criticizing human rights violations by their rulers, and some were detained by making speeches that were considered endangered the national security. Some were missing because they published banned books, and some were abducted from their bookstores for displaying publications that offended the regime.

There is never a lack of reasons to erase a person. I never imagined I would be one of them.

I have asked myself millions of times, "Would I do the same thing if time were reversed?" There is no answer. I wasn’t particularly brave or righteous. I simply voiced reasonable demands. I’ve begun my journey without any preparation.

From where I am, I can see a small piece of sky, although it is too small to rhyme. Once in a while, a bird flies by and my world vibrates for a second. I miss the moving sunbeams and changing landscape season by season, I miss the steam of very hot coffee in the morning, I miss the roaring cars beneath my windows. I miss the body heat when I embraced my fellow poets and protestors in falling snow. Where are they now? And do they know where I am now?

The war drags on, and I’ve started my journey without any expectations. I am not alone, nor will I be the last. I am not well-known, nor am I entirely forgotten.

I miss the secret book readings my friends would organize in their tiny apartments. I miss my unpublished poems which might not be read anymore.

I keep writing. When the war ends, I will still be here. When the world celebrates the victory of democracy and the precious autonomy, my hair will turn gray, and my vision will fade. My ideas shall not be silenced, my idealism shall not age. I will still be read and remembered, for being heard is my delivery.

Can you hear the deafening sound of my poems being read outside of the walls? I do. What will last longer? Me, the dictator, or my poetry?

The longer we are confined, the louder our works become.

C. J. Anderson-Wu is a Taiwanese writer. In 2017 she published Impossible to Swallow—A Collection of Short Stories About The White Terror in Taiwan and in 2021 The Surveillance—Tales of White Terror in Taiwan. Based on true characters and real incidents, her works look into the political oppression and the traumas resulting from the state’s brutal violation of human rights. Currently she is working on her third book Endangered Youth— To Hong Kong. Her works have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards, including the Mastermind Short Story Contest and the Art of Unity Creative Award by the International Human Rights Art Festival. She also won the Strands Lit International Flash Fiction Competition, the Invisible City Blurred Genre Literature Competition, and the Wordweavers Literature Contest.