Wait, wait!

My fingertips aren’t orange enough yet!

 

Hold on a sec!

I’m not done stretching my earlobes.

 

Don’t ask me to salsa.

It’s the one question I can never perform.

 

Heaven forbid!

Ave Maria!

My hips don’t orbit my feet!

Are they supposed to?

 

I left my beads at home.

What the hell am I supposed to do

now that I’m naked?

 

Naked and still burn.

Never rust just right enough.

Guess I’ll have to peel off another layer

and try again.

 

Beg the sun

to bloom my ass like it does the flowers.

 

Fire, fire, fire!

Fuego, fuego, fuego!

Am I hot enough yet?

Am I dark enough yet?

 

I haven’t checked in a while,

but I’m hoping today is the day

I’m Rican enough.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 6/2/2015

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

 

Wrote this on my morning commute. There’s been this constant pressure for as long as I can remember to prove my ethnicity. Was randomly thinking about it this morning and this poem was the result.

My favorite stanza is the fuego part. Also PSA, you don’t have to prove anything to anyone. Be proud. This is still something I’m trying to learn myself. 😉