In Between Two Tongues

I walk into rooms where my skin

writes stories my soul isn’t signed off on.

They look at me — pale skin, soft features,

and decide my heritage

must be somewhere else.

“Wait, you’re Latina?”

Like it’s a trick question.

Like I just said I’m part unicorn,

half ghost, quarter fairy —

impossible.

They ask me to prove it,

like my bloodline’s a pop quiz I forgot to study for.

“Say something in Spanish.”

So I open my mouth

and stumble —

my words mumble, stutter, trip,

my tongue limp from anxiety

that makes perdón sound like per…dón’t.

My r’s rolling with air,

and suddenly, I’m “fake.”

A knockoff.

A clearance-rack Latina

with no receipt.

“She’s too white to know arroz con gandules,

too white to dance salsa without using Google,

too white to carry la abuela’s prayers in her mouth.”

But step into a room with white girls,

and suddenly I’m “exotic.”

Spicy.

Different.

But not different enough to matter.

Not different enough to belong.

Just enough to feel

other.

Just enough for them to mock the way I say “Puerto Rico”

like I’m rolling the wrong r’s.

Just enough for them to claim they hear my accent,

when others tell me I lack one.

I carry the flag in my heart

but it’s stitched into silence.

I love a culture that forgets to call me family.

I’m homesick for a home I never got the chance to know.

My culture's history?

Lost to the wind because I never understood the words

until they turned into sand in my hands.

The island?

Feels like fiction.

Like something written in a language

I was never actually fluent in

but always meant to be.

I learned to hide my pride in whispers,

not parades.

I learned how to correct my Spanish without help,

not celebrate it.

I learned  how to vaguely read and write in the mother tongue,

because it was deemed not important enough.

I learned how to silently apologize

for not being “enough.”

You say I’m too white for latinas,

but I’m too latina for white people.

Too colonized for the streets of San Juan.

But not colonized enough to walk on stolen land,

too confused for any real clarity.

But I’m done folding myself

into pieces small enough to fit your boxes.

Done choosing one half at the funeral of the other,

when both are dying.

I am not your stereotype,

not your code-switch puppet you play with,

not your identity quiz to try and solve nor strip even more.

I am all of this and none at the same time,

a bridge between silence and screams,

between denial and unreachable dreams.

So call me ni de aquí, ni de allá —

not from here, not from there —

but don’t forget,

I’m still real.

Still Boricua,

even when my tongue forgets

how to say it

the way you want to hear.