justification

i thought that poetry was just a triviality of the privileged until i learned that poetry names what our minds cannot name

what our spirits cannot name

poetry is a vehicle that guides my conscious to its destination and is

the teacher that knows just what to say to spark the fire that will light up a room of my heart.

i thought that the feelings i could not name were a red mark

were just something i should lock away, lock away and never let anyone glimpse my foolishness

my faults

my insanities

what i cannot name cannot exist

i cannot share it and thus cannot understand it

i must control myself tighter than a red guard

and calculate every movement so that caesar would be proud.

being a woman was something i could not name

it was something that shamed me

its implications were beyond my abilities

i was not beautiful enough

i was not brave enough

i was not brilliant

or whole

or appropriate enough to claim this title

i told myself that womanhood was not something that was given, but that was earned

i told myself that one day i could make up for my imperfect skin and chubby cheeks and eventually earn that trophy of womanhood.

perhaps that’s why i raged when my sister teased me about my period

and i refused to even hear that word

because periods were for women, and i was not good enough

i was too shameful to be a woman.

women had a heritage

women had a matrilineal line of female warriors

and heros

that filled their blood with the trial and grit of a woman.

i had none

i was ashamed of my mother

of her history

and i had no heritage

that imbued me with any right to call myself a proud woman of this line.

i would always be swimming between scylla and charybdis

i would always feel jealous of my father and his unmistaken identity

that he had no doubt he was cuban and hailed from the island

that his parents were immigrants who had earned that prestigious title

that he had a heritage

and i had none, a white girl who felt too ashamed to be a white girl.

a stoicism i could not justify

and a mindset i could not complete.