“Seeing”

Cassie Pilgrim

Chinese/Mixed Race | Saint Paul, MN | she/her/hers | Non-Profit

For the first years of my life

I had a mushroom cut

The boxy frame of which

Is ritual, rite of passage

Along with red packets

And odd snacks

Creating confusion I delighted in.

I am half and learned to say “only”

And longed to be seen

In shades of green

Like the giant jade ring around my wrist

That shattered immediately

In the school hallway.

In later years

The solidarity I yearned

I earned in the terror of it all

In being a China doll and feigning dumb

And weak and nice and soft and here and there

Whatever it takes

You play hide and seek to stay safe.

The revelation that recognition

Means wariness, means fear

And the peculiar desire to disappear

A sick granting of my childhood wish

With twisted gratitude that I am certainly enough

For hungry eyes.

To those eyes we demand to be seen

For them to be listening

Let our languages ring like sweet music

And the tendrils that connect us,

Ancient and firm,

Through joy and kinship that remain

Through any measure of pain,

Let them behold us.

Cassie Pilgrim is the Principal Oboist of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. In addition, she has performed in The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. During the summer, she has appeared at Festival Mozaic, Music from Angel Fire, the Aspen Music Festival and the Colorado College Summer Music Festival. Cassie studied with Richard Woodhams at the Curtis Institute of Music and most recently with Robert Walters as an Artist Diploma Student at the Oberlin Conservatory. Cassie is proudly half-Chinese with her family hailing from Guangzhou. Aside from music, she enjoys writing, hammocking and eating dimsum.