Do you remember that smile?

When my words jumped a mile a minute and I didn’t have to think before I said a thing

Do you remember madre?

How every day I would sing the same song?

Don’t you remember?

It wasn’t always like this, I wasn’t always like this. I wasn’t always quietly raging in my own mind

I wasn’t always pointing out the ugly things I saw on the news, or heard about at school

Hey mis hermanas? You remember don’t you??

You remember the loud careless laughter I used to carry around with me???

                                                                          I know You Remember.

But…

I don’t think you remember how often I’d look out the window, contemplating the next time I had to smile or the next time I had to laugh loud enough to cover my tracks

I don’t think you remember

No… You probably don’t remember

You probably won’t remember any distant look I had on my face

Thinking about how often I had to fake this happiness as if I had been gifted with this never ending well, a supply that would never go dry, something that I could offer up when my input was needed

                                I probably don’t remember that at some point, it was true

                But I also can’t remember at which point my face became a mask

And the time where I broke it and I actually decided that who I was, was good enough is also a bit cloudy too

But more than good enough

                 I was incredible

I had given myself a voice when I used to keep it locked I my own mind

I had allowed myself to be angry that I had every right to scream at a world so drowned in hate

Then I remembered to allow myself to be happy.

Hola mi hermanito, you won’t remember that your sister was weak

You are going to grow up thinking that I had always been this strong, this loud, this abrasive.

GOOD.

Remember not that I was an empty husk at some point, allowing my body to drift where it was told to drift

Remember not that I was a machine, cold, with calculated warmth concocted from an algorithm of

isolation,

 desolation,

 and imitation emotion

Will you remember?? That your sister was a dragon beneath a porcelain mask that melted off because the fire beneath was too strong.

A dragon who spent her years,

will spend the rest of her years,

helping other little boys and girls melt off the masks that they are imprisoned by.

Because mutilation of your identity seems like a supplication for demolition

We all know society has this association with stratification and god forbid if we do not neatly and quietly mold to their expectations.

Remember, mi hermanito, if you chose to remember at all

It will be your choice to remain a doll.

Do not pretend weakness like me. Do not hide behind the mask that they give you.

Do not give in quietly.