I remember the smell of tamales during Christmas
and the rattle of dry beans on the table
as we separated the bad from the good.

Your bean soup
that I never wanted to learn
until it was too late, and you were gone.

I didn’t like spice and I didn’t like change
and I rejected you piece by piece
so that I could say with certainty
that there wasn’t anything in me like you.

Now I struggle to learn Spanish on an app
when it should have been my native tongue.
I have lived my entire life White.
I didn’t know I could be Latina at the same time.

Maybe you tried to tell me.
Maybe it was a relief that my skin is pale.

I had a tamale last week.
Estuvo deliciouso.

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a mirror, cracked in two by Mallory Overbrook is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.