April 9, 2025

(or maybe: still breathing, somehow)

I don’t really know what’s going on.
I’m moving but lost,
stuck and still spinning
like I can’t stop, like I was never meant to.

It’s getting harder
to keep waking up
to keep breathing
without wondering why I should.
(Not a confession, just a truth: I’m tired.)

My heart pulls left,
my head pulls right.
Somewhere between, I fray.

I want love
the kind that softens,
that stays.
But I also want to be great.
Not “good for a girl.”
Not “strong for a woman.”
Great. Period.

Can I be both?
Can I be someone who matters
and someone who is held?
Einstein had children,
his world never paused.
But he wasn’t expected to hold the world together with one hand
and rewrite it with the other.

I have crushes.
I still scribble their names in the margins of my thoughts.
Still imagine kisses like they’re the cure.
And maybe they are.
But also
I want to build something bigger than me.
To give something back to the future.
To be more than
wife, mother, missing.

In another version of this world,
I work
and work
and work
until I forget what dreaming feels like.
It’s hard to be great when survival is a full-time job.
I’m not dumb.
I just don’t have the privilege
to make school my only priority.

Then there’s my culture—
my people.
Am I doing enough?
Am I learning,
speaking,
lifting
the ones who made me?

“¿Y tú, mija, por qué lloras?”
Porque estoy cansada, y no sé quién soy.

Who even am I?
Just a girl
pitched against every life she could’ve had.

A writer
with no words.
A voice
gone quiet.
A heart
still beating.

Lost.