Mestiza

I’m a mixed kid who grew up White-washed,

tongue tossed in ranch,

and maybe it was organic,

but it wasn’t the Spanish

my ancestors carried across the Atlantic;

that banished the Indigena for the dogmatic,

married soil to the seabird and called us Hispanic.

Here I am, sun-kissed, tight-lipped with panic,

standing, stranded,

shipwrecked on the doorstep of my transplanted

inheritance. Am I Latin? Or a lamentation?

The first generation

to spell home before assimilation.

Because even if this place doesn’t want me,

it made sure to take the “un-American” away.

But you can’t erase melanin.

You can’t unmake DNA.

“What’s your nationality?”

“What’s your race?”

“Are you Native?” Yes,

but not to this place.

I come from the enslavers

and the enslaved.

The blood that was spilled filled the wombs

that gave me today.

This is a nation of immigration,

I shouldn’t have to say it—oh wait,

the racists, and the games they’ve been playing.

I tell people that my soul is Caucasian,

I’m culturally White.

I’ve tried to deny my genetic ties,

think people would believe me

if I said I was… I was… I am White?

Right?

Isn’t it easier to bury a history

no one told me was mine?

Carry the skin of kin

I was not raised within?

An ex once told me I was sooo good

at doing dishes because I was Latina,

made fun of the way I say “tortilla,”

then claimed the next day,

I was a charade, made

sure I could tell a heart from a spade,

as if I haven’t held the same blade

to my throat,

threatened to cut the last of a hope

from a lineage already torn open.

I’m too White to be Brown,

too Brown to be White,

and so much remains unspoken.

I’m just waiting for someone to tell me that

this body was never broken.