is a concrete hut that won’t let the rain fall
on the sleeping bodies below.
In Mexico, only a few miles divide
the people with manicured fingers,
pool houses, and Gucci bags
from the ones with ragged shoes,
a hole for a toilet, and only the foul taste
of their breath in their empty stomachs.
In Mexico, you get used to the hungry eyes.
In Mexico, eating in the outside part of
a restaurant
means having to face the kids asking
for just a little piece of your food.
In Mexico, kids are made of bones,
women are made of tears, and men are made
of too many hours beneath the
menacing heat from the sun.
In Mexico, old ladies asleep on the street
are mistaken for trash bags.
And still, what pride it is
that the richest man in the world
is Mexican, right?
In Mexico, we are taught to always
keep our eyes on the ground,
to obey. We are taught that
it is not our place to whine or complain
or ask for a country that does not
treat its people like pawns in a game.
In Mexico, when someone says your name,
you answer with “Mande,”
meaning “Lead,”
meaning “I am your servant,”
meaning “I can do nothing but follow.”
In Mexico, we are taught to cover
the cracks in the dining table with placemats.
To pretend it is not falling apart beneath us.
In Mexico, we say “I want to go do
community service in Africa.
They are so poor over there.”
In Mexico, we don’t know the “in between.”
We have the billionaires and
we have the extreme hunger-naires.
In Mexico, I learned how to
expertly avert my eyes from the man in rags
holding an empty cup at me,
and how to pretend I don’t have change
when children made of dirt tap on the
car window.
In Mexico, we learn to fit ourselves in
pocket holes.
Always silenced. Always shrunk.