I’m awake
I lay still
My eyes still closed
The daylight sines in though the window
I can feel its warmth
The rays dance across my eyelids
Daring me, Begging me to open them.
I can’t
I won’t
Because if I do I will know it was only a dream, again.
I’m ashamed that I can’t seem to fit the person you see when you look at me,
That when ever you say something kind its like daggers being shoved into
my spine,
I can take apart your words letter by letter,
When I try and put them back together-
All I see is what could only amount to sugar coated lies. . .
Your truths, what you swear you can see in me,
Leaves me lost in translation.
I can see but yet I feel blind,
Why can’t I see what you see?
Am I’m too scared to believe it?
If I do-
And if its really true. . .
What will be my excuse for trying to stay hidden and outside of view.
Surprisingly, despite my size I would rather be invisible.
I try to keep quite and keep it all locked inside,
Going though life as just another whisper falling on deaf ears.
Where I walk with my back to walls so even I don’t have to see my shadow.
Only ear and eyes. . .That’s what I want to be.
Mama me dice que she never knew that I was different
Y Papa well he was never around.
But Abuelita says that she knew better,
I have become something they never wanted me to be
“¡Dios no te creó de esa manera!”
I try to remember things for myself.
Events in my childhood,
Before being told their version,
Each one different from the last time the story was told.
Necesito valor para aceptar las cosas en my vida que no van a cambiar
Y las cosas que no puedo cambiar,
Necesito fuerza para poder librarme de los consejos que de verdad eran
mentiras,
Little white lies originally meant to save me the pain of knowing the truth.
These lies have made me ciega
Unable to judge peoples true intentions-
So I just shut myself out form it all.
I blame myself.
I would slit my own throat, rather then being left choking, drowning,
gasping-
Grasping for any type of esperanza.
Begging for you to realize. .
To LOOK at me. . .
To see and understand
That this is how I am Mama
Como tu dios me creó. . .
¿Que puedo hacer?
I just want to make you proud
Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.
Pero la diferencia no nos deja. . .
How can you ask this of me?
To hide and leave behind the parts of my life that you do not wish to see?
“Tengo que amarte porque eres me Hija”,
Only because you have to?
I do not ask you to remove the color of your piel,
Yes I know as a mestiza I should be proud.
I do not look down on your work,
You push us to get an education so we wont have to scrub on our hands and
knees like you do.
Oh how I wish you could rest your tired hands. . .
Can you not see that your struggle is my struggle?
¡Mama te amo! and not because I have to.
La diferencia is more than the color of my skin, gender, or language I speak
La diferencia is a word then when spoken hearts ache with heavy sighs
I can see the pieces of my mothers corazón breaking.
No se que puedo hacer para ayudarte a comprender that though I am getting
older. . .
The women I am now is still the niña that you gave birth to-
the niña that you loved-
. . . .the niña that is sorry for all your struggle and pain-
I do not wish to cause you more.
I am the niña -your daughter who is Queer.
