You would think, 

that after years in the education system, 

I would have learned not to cut corners as I walk school hallways. 

But, no. I still do. 

You would think 

that I would’ve learned by now, 

because, I can assure you, 

nine times out of ten, 

I walk face-first into some student 

who also thought the commute 

that always takes them twenty minutes 

would only take ten today. 

But you would think that after nearly twenty years of living in toasted skin, I would have learned who I am, and where I fit in. Because, on day one of high school, after walking around a corner and straight into someone, and murmuring an apology, I then walk into Spanish class, and within five tell-tale minutes, I am apologizing again. 

I know my eyes sing chocolate 

while my skin hints at coffee. 

I know, standing with my father, 

I look just 

dark enough. 

My nana stands in the kitchen, tortillas frying on the stove. 

She pulls me close, 

lifts my face to hers, 

and I see, again, that chocolate melody, 

I see my eyes in hers. 

Listen mija, she says, 

Mija, I love you. 

Yet I am standing, in the heat of July, on State Street, with a man screaming his slurred, drunken rage at the close circle of lighter, whiter-skinned girls around me,

And I hear him ask why I care to live a life of nothingness, 

hear him ask why 

won't us white girls 

ever listen. 

I stand, half the year, when the sun is absent to darken my skin, with a white outside, and a still weeping, fallen Latina inside. A girl begging for acceptance and rest; my multiculturalism is this sense of forever falling apart, leaving me in the dark to question if they will understand, if these are the right words, if this is how I should sound, and do I look enough like them?

Becoming. 

noun: “the process of coming to be something or of passing into a state.”

I ask why so many people of privilege are so 

persistently 

against the elements which catalyze and renew identity, which allow us to begin our becoming: the idea of our process? Of transition? Of the time of a transformation of identity? 

In those five minutes in Spanish class, on that first day, 

freshly fourteen years old, 

when I listened to the kids, 

the ones who would soon quietly be shifted to another class, 

the kids with Spanish flowing off their tongues, 

I saw the teacher turn to me, 

I saw 

the question 

forming in her eyes 

She sang out words, falling and rising. 

But I shook my head, 

Carefully surveyed the floor, 

Said a whispered 

I don’t understand.

After years 

of this exact little spotlight show 

taking the giddy joy of performing itself 

with every white Spanish teacher I have had, 

I realize, 

I was never meant to understand the question. 

Because that question is, at its root, based 

in white culture, white thought, and white tradition. 

White privilege. 

When we live in two worlds, 

we are 

scared 

to practice our freedom, 

for fear we are not enough, 

when this entire concept of enough 

is something we are stripped from defining for ourselves. 

While I sit, today, in the classroom, with my story and my identity decided for me, not only by the people around me, but by the textbook before me, I am reminded 

that we are only given the space to say 

I am enough 

when we achieve some great triumph, 

only heard to scream 

THIS 

IS 

ENOUGH 

when the white world decides they want to hear from us, even though to us it is as daily as breath. Enough of the microaggressions. Enough of the prejudice, the racism. The inequality: enough. The violence. ENOUGH. 

I have become the girl that knows, that 

in summer, with my father, I look just dark enough.

The child, the woman, that knows, too 

in winter with my mother, 

I look just 

light enough. 

I have his hair, his eyes, his nose, 

But I have her mouth, her words coming from my lips. 

Maybe one day I will learn not to cut that hallway corner, as I walk through school, and then I won't have to apologize. 

And maybe, one day, I will feel at peace in my skin, 

my flowing mixture of dark and light, 

without feeling like I need to apologize. 

And maybe, one day, I will stand between the light of my mother and the dark of my father and know, feel, that I belong. But right now, I’m still cutting corners and walking into people, and I’m still wondering where, exactly, I fit in. 

And that 

is my becoming. 

My choice to accept I will not always be understood. 

But, I can learn to understand 

myself. 

And until the world is ready to hear more, 

that 

is my definition of enough.