By Xiomarra Milann
mezclada
I am 27 and all I want is for everything I say to sound like poetry
Mírame
Some try-hard beautiful, faux-philosophical cursi
“I take everything and make it art” ass bitch
The girl with a thorn in her side/This girl is a gun/This bridge is my back
A metaphor that weighs on me with the fire of a thousand suns
Malaphor
Dos idiomas
Linguistic blend
It is all I am
Blended
Language is bad, therefore soy mala también
My language
LanguageS
I think language is messy, therefore I am
A big mess of
Think, therefore I am
I know that
All I know is
No sé nada
Nothing
I think
I am
27 and all I want
Is for everything I say
To sound like poetry
american mouth My culture is the water stains on dishes my great-grandmother washed clean to try and make holy The Spanglish, space between my tongue and teeth, I’ve always been good at existing in two places at once My tongue is heavy, can't roll my r’s when someone else is looking Melissa calls it a phantom limb, but it’s more like the tingling in an appendage you haven't used in a while, a foot you’ve been sitting on the entire drive. I know if I just shake it enough I can wake it up, bring it back to life My Spanish is hot plates, burnt finger tips, waitresses calling me querida only for me to smile and say “thank you” before I remember to say gracias It is the place where I think it faster than I speak it, or maybe I just think I think it more than I actually do, because I know what you mean but I can’t tell you that in a language you’d understand These linguistic habits, a conditioned response from a culture who chose to rule by slapping a language off our tongues and coaxing it into their own mouths Spanish in America makes us ignorant, them exceptional, bi-lingualism brings in their bi-g bi-lletes My 9th grade Spanish teacher was a white woman from Oklahoma who criticized my Spanish as if it wasn’t something I had to fight for for free, like I wasn’t paying for the loss of my culture every damn day of my life Like she was blind to color, like she was blind to the irony that repackaging it in her nice white box didn’t make it any less mine Cashing in her check every month to call me a pocha as if that wasn’t something to be proud of, being able to exist between two lines that her and her people could never touch My Mexican is fucked up, but my American is too When they start you from the bottom, there’s only one way you can go
Xiomarra Milann is a Chicana writer based in Laredo, TX who is trying really hard to make the person who said “those who can’t do, teach” turn in their grave. In her free time, she is the host of the “ButUmmYeah” podcast and hopes in her next life she’ll be born as something with wings. You can find her @xiomilann on Instagram and read her work in Sam Fiftyfour Literary, Infrarrealista Review, Ink & Marrow Lit, The Acentos Review, Querencia Press, and on her 6th grade creative writing teacher’s bulletin board, among other places. Her work is forthcoming in The Sybil Journal.