i.
I felt traffic in my head,
and the exhaustion in his fingers like
he’d been laying brick
for eight hours straight.
Which he was.
I didn’t ask for this,
a song I had created
in my head
playing
and
playing
on repeat
And the embarrassment I felt at the
Mexican Consulate sometime before
graduating—
and while my friends were
getting in line at the DMV, excited
for driver’s permits and identifications,
I was told:
You have no business here.
ii.
I made an appointment to
see a Mexican official
months in advance—
but the man spoke Spanish.
I tried my best to decipher the
puzzle of words the man spewed,
but his sentences laughed at me instead
—The way people laugh after a mean joke—
Years of speaking
Spanglish instead of
proper jargon
was the real joke.
I felt like a horse without water
like flowers with no rain in sight
after
each
question.
—What’s a word I can use to describe: I didn’t
belong there, but that’s also where I belonged? That’s how I felt—
iii.
He reached out from his tiny box,
handed me the receipt,
and my newly printed “government” ID
—With the Mexican seal glossing
across the meretricious card,
but I didn’t feel like a star—
I felt traffic in my head,
and I went back to work
with my dad.
He picked
me up on 6th street.
He was playing K-Love.
—“I didn’t ask for this”
on repeat—
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