Her braids smell like cigarettes.

Mordida

My tongue is confused. I hear boys talking about music. Boys talking about philosophy. Boys
talking. Boys, boys, boys. I’m looking into the dome they’re inside of: my whispers keep
bouncing back at me. And I’m feeling stupid, and I’m not. I’m not stupid. No one looks me in
the eye when I’m talking. No one looks at me, Mexico, Mexico, Mexico, Colombia, Peru. Can
you tell me where I am? No one looks in my direction.

I kneel in front of a “philosopher” while he talks over me. He baptizes me with words. I look up
at him, talking about absurdism, and it rolls off my back.

Apenas

At the end of the night, we’re all looking to take our faces off and settle into a language that is
most comfortable. Let it flow from us as natural air.

It is most comfortable for me to go mute. There’s no peace better than no sound. Gestures, looks,
movement, are all I can manage.

Ingrato

I wonder what it is about being in the United States, amongst Americans, that makes us feel like
we should be less grateful. More cool. To look like everything you’ve done is effortless, or an
accident.

I worked very hard to be here. I’m too poor to be here. I want to yell every time I see myself in
someone who is mopping the floor and explain that my being here is not incidental. That the
effort to bring me here began decades ago. I don’t see myself where I should. I am in a single
boat floating over a sea of bored faces unimpressed by the greenery and access. It’s a luxury to
exist in a space like this, and complain about the shuttle, and the food, and the workload, and the
staff, and the hundred other things that other people who aren’t me get to find problems with.

They are bored of their abundance.

Saber

I think that they avoid looking at me because they’ll catch whatever I have: being vague and
undefined instead of vibrant and clear.

–There’s not many people on campus that look like me.

I do.