Thank You, Little Girl by Flor Hernandez Zarate
I am the child of the wildflowers.
the child of a mother
whose bare feet walked the earth;
frail and alone.
the child of a mother
who experienced girlhood motherless.
a mother
who struggles to keep her language,
who was forced to learn new ones,
because she had no one
to feed her warm atole and tlayudas after childbirth.
it is a Zapotec expectation for women and girls
to take care of each other.
from girlhood
we are taught
to interweave bright satin ribbon into our braids,
ribbons that remind us:
we are the bonds that hold our communities together.
Like my tía Joventina,
a women who at the age of seventy-eight,
wears a crown composed of her braids
as she transforms maíz into tlayudas for her family.
we wear embroidered flowers across our chests.
flowers whose beauty is bestowed
by the original mother;
but as beautiful as our culture is
we have been tainted by the outside world:
forced migration, colonization, misogyny.
we exist equally between joy and rage,
as well as ancestral resistance.
the endless summer halts suddenly in August
when purple bruises bloom across my face and thighs.
my father is destroyed by his own pride.
I come from a father and a mother who have yet to forgive themselves,
and I am a girl with no one to defend me
tiny heart beating fast, tears consumed by carpet, lips pouring wishes into the universe.
a sole wildflower somewhere on a lonely hillside.
the rose that grew from concrete?
no
Cempazuchitl silvestre.
Flor is a 22 year old Zapotec writer and organizer. She was born in raised on unceeded Chumash lands, otherwise known as Nipomo. She is unapologetically a fan of young adult novels and children's literature. It is her hope for a future where Black, Indigenous, and children/teens of color consistently encounter literature that encapsulates their realities. She can be found @cempazuchitls_library. The cover photo, by Summer Paa’ila Herrera Jones, is from Summer’s “Traditions We Carry” series, featured on THE VISUAL.