My Heart, Mi Corazón

Still Me. All of Me.

I was born in Worcester.
Did some growing and some dying in a town you’ve probably never heard of.
Spent some time running in Boston.
But part of me still smells like calabacitas and lost recipes.

Mi nana made food
like she prayed—
without a recipe, con fé,
with warm manos quebradas
y un corazón full of salt
y canela.

I didn’t grow up
deserving her language
no fui digna de sus palabras,
I never got the hymnal,
but I still knew her words
by heart.

I remember her voice,
saying mija,
my daughter,
my darling,
like I wasn’t only
a mistake.

I burned arroz once
and cried,
not for the rice,
but porque el olor,
the smell lingered,
un fantasma.

I didn’t know she was the wall between me and the dark.
Not until the wall fell.

The streets smelled more like gasoline and rotten rubber. Maybe a little sour sewage and fermented trash. That sounds worse than it was. Even trash can smell like home once you've lost the kitchen you belonged to.

Everywhere I lay my head,
from my nana’s casita,
to the house where I stopped being safe,
to the group homes,
to the laundromats,
to the stairwells,
to the ratty couches I bartered for in flesh—
yeah, es verdad…

It can all smell like home eventually.

Mi corazón
no tiene casa.
No tiene madre.
No tiene lengua sin pecado.
Una cosa rota.
Sólo un latido sordo detrás de mis costillas.
Just a ghost slipping my lips.
Y silencio.

Yo tenía un nombre
más viejo que los cuentos,
más suave que el pan recién hecho
pero me lo quitaron
con agua fría
y vergüenza.

My heart murmurs en español.
My dreams simmer in it.
My waking mind percolates in practiced English.
Until my heart must be heard.
Like a bitter old couple.
Married, but not unified.
Bickering over pozole or chicken noodle.

I am Irish-American, but not enough. I am Mexican-American, but not enough. I think about claiming Latina, but the word sours on my tongue. Not enough.

The older I got, the colder my parents got—with a poison I’d only recognize once it was mine. Then, I would be slapped for speaking Spanish at home. If it was in public, going home would be much worse.

If anyone asks about why your hair is so black, why your eyes are so brown?

“Say you’re Italian,” my mother said. “Say you’ve got Irish in you, too.”

Like that was the recipe.
As if enough European blood makes you safe.
Makes you palatable.

Irish, Italian…
Must be American enough.
Must be apple pie enough.

Too many seeds.
Too much cyanide to swallow.

Not enough.
Not white enough.
Not brown enough.
Not dead enough to stop writing.

So I write.
With blood.
With ghosts.
With every no they shoved down my throat.

Still here.
Still dirty.
Still. Un. Fucking. Killable.

And god have they tried.
And so have I.
But Charon won’t come.
No matter what I plead.
No obol to pay.

Haven’t earned it.
Not done.
Not enough.
Not yet

Still writing.

Swallow my name.
Swallow my bloodline.
Choke on it.
Spit it out on the page.

But now?

I will not hide behind the cream facade my parents built.
I will not sand down my blade.
I will not hide the language burning my heart and casting my dreams.

No more.
No more.
No más.

Nunca más.

Ever.

I wasn’t supposed to make it past twenty.
I hoped not to make it past fifteen.
Thirty-five seems an impossibility when you’re running.
I didn’t plan for this body to last.
Didn’t want it to.
I still catch myself treating every morning like a mistake.

So, I fold towels.
It was the last thing she taught me.
She’d tap them. Corner to corner.
Como esto, mija.
Make it clean.
Make it proud.
I still do it.

Just to feel her hands again.

Just to feel what it would have been if I had gotten to teach my own.
Como esto, mija.
Como nana.

I would’ve told her her name in two languages.
And I would’ve let her keep them both.

I don’t know if this is healing.
But it’s what I do instead of dying.

I don’ know that I believe in healing.
Not really. Not fully.

But I do believe in clean socks.
In washing the pan even if no one’s coming to dinner.
In brushing my teeth like I’m not just waiting to rot.

I survive out of habit now.
And sometimes, habit looks a lot like hope.

Hope is a hunger.
I thought I’d lost my taste for it.

After all,
my body wasn’t built to last.
Not the way I treated it.
Not the way they did.
But it’s still here.
Knees that creak.
Scars that never fade.
Breasts that ache sometimes—
like they remember the child I carried but never had.
A womb that learned to ache without blooming.
A spine that bends but didn’t snap.

Hope is a hunger.
For what?

For somewhere that smells like home
without rot.

For the kind of love that comes
without bruises.

For the kind of belonging that
accepts my name,
my blood,
my tongue.

For a name said soft.
For a bed and a space I didn’t have to earn.
For hands that hold me
without taking.

For the girl who baked,
who wrote,
who played animals,
who sang to stray cats,
who believed,
who was unashamed,
to come back.

And find me still here.
Still me.
All of me.

Finalmente.

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More essays, diary entries, fiction, and poems are coming.
-Ava