“Honey y las Monarcas” by Honey Guzman Ibarra
Some days,
nothing feels like it should.
No joy, no spark–
solo este peso quieto
resting deep in the chest,
growing heavier
with every passing year.
It’s been so long
since I’ve seen my parents,
and cada día
I miss them a little more.
They can’t come.
I can’t go.
We’re caught in borders
no one else can see,
In a país that scares us,
where someone is lost each day,
where working means
just surviving
to another sunrise.
I’m here
not only for myself
but for them.
Mis padres dreamed of something better,
and I walk that dream–
aunque duela.
Competing in classrooms
with students whose parents
sit in the front row of their lives,
who don’t carry fear
written between their notes,
who never had to grow up
so soon.
I am here,
con el temor de mi gente,
with the ache that rises
every time ICE takes
another one of las monarcas.
And I wonder,
Will I be next?
And I’m here,
the only brown face in the room,
where nobody seems worried–
porque ellos tienen a su familia,
And danger is something
they only read about.
And I’m still here,
in the back row, watching,
learning each of their faces,
wondering if they’ll ever see
the stories I carry,
the ones they’ve never
had to live.
But still…
like the monarch butterflies,
las monarcas that travel miles
on wings too delicate
to believe in–
I keep going.
With fear, with fuerza,
with hope trembling
but alive.
Because Honey doesn’t break.
Porque mis padres planted in me
a flight
that no one
can take away.
The Fear of a Man Without the ‘H’ Honey Guzman Ibarra
I’m living here,
and every day this country scares me a little more.
We’re moving backwards,
and we know it.
Ignorance keeps trying to swallow us whole,
and I’m done running.
Men carry their machismo like a trofeo,
and I refuse to bend to it.
I’m in the same corner as always,
watching our humanity slip through its own fingers,
watching the dignity of my monarcas fall apart,
my mariposas fighting to stay whole.
And I’m here,
trying to understand ICE agents,
mostly white men wrapped in uniforms
that pretend to stand for order
while they act out of fear.
I wonder how they live with themselves
when they break families,
when they crush sueños,
when they leave niños without the arms that raised them.
Does it make them laugh?
A mí no.
It hurts to witness a world like this,
where your color de piel writes your destiny,
where you’re punished for simply being alive.
And I’m here,
watching them use every ounce of power
to keep my mariposas from rising,
because they know what we can do,
and that knowledge keeps them awake at night.
And I’m here,
waiting for the day we stop asking,
and start taking what has always been ours.
El color canela doesn’t hide.
El color canela resists, creates, and refuses to die.
El color canela es vida.
And if they ask me,
“But señorita Honey, what are they really afraid of?”
I’ll tell them without hesitation:
They’re afraid we no longer need their permission.
They’re afraid women, migrants, mujeres piel canela won’t break, no matter how hard they push.
They’re afraid we keep building community, even as they try to tear us apart.
They’re afraid of our voices, our stories, our memory.
They’re afraid of us standing together, unshaken, alive.
They’re afraid we won’t fit into the tiny spaces they made for us.
They’re afraid that, no matter what they take, we will rise.
They’re afraid of a Latina woman who refuses to disappear.