Found
I think it's been almost four years
I've gone through and counted the days, months, years
in poetry
I think it started
with this urge of expression
from the quiet girl
who listened to the calling
from pen,
and paper,
from twenty-six letters
and some punctuation
I think it grew
with the mind I cultivated
in my heritage,
in the sun,
under the stars,
in the colors of the wind,
and the enchiladas my mamá makes,
the same mind I dipped
in the words spoken
by an expanding world
in the mind I kept
in the tiny notebook
next to my pillow,
and the ink from the pen besides it
it grew stronger
in the words of
transcendentalists
and activists
and writers
I became a poet, and
my writing grew
as I struggled
to place myself in a world where
my people are
"rapists and killers",
where I might as well
forget
my first language because,
"You're in America now
and English is what we speak here."
I struggled to place myself
in the land where I was born
or the one whose
language and culture raised me
I could translate my
confusion
of being too
Americanized
to fit in to my Mexican family's
jigsaw puzzle,
my 92-year-old great-grandfather
referring to me as,
"la norteña"
but too hated
to be accepted
to the nation I've been
holding my right hand over my heart for
for the past eleven years,
on paper
on that canvas,
I could paint to my mind's desire,
words and lines, stanzas
filling
every corner, every page
and once that page was full,
I could turn it and there would be more
more understanding,
more empty space for the epiphany
that came eventually
writing these words meant
I could find myself
in the middle
as a mix of both the places
I have roots in
it meant I could be in between,
without being forced
to choose just one
because no matter how many stanzas
and journals I filled,
I could continue to be
who I am
and I didn't have to side
with one over the other
I could have both
because
the paper I wrote my
poetry on
never rejected my words in Spanish
or my words in English
in fact,
in poesía,
on the papel,
the two stopped quarreling
like they did in my mind
and complemented
each other
like I had no idea
they could