I AM ….
I am an island baby…not of steel drums or calypso music,
But of iron-willed women with swaying hips, and lips that glean with sunshine and open up to rattle in my mother tongue.
I am a ghetto girl…not akimbo, with big hoop earrings, chewing gum till it pops, threatening to cut,
But afraid, with small eyes, small hands, surrounded by cigarette-smoking tough boys and their snarling dogs, the smacking of a woman upstairs and the bang of American rock on the radio.
I am a city kid…not savvy or sophisticated,
But spraying my hair blue on the street with my best friend and running through the train cars to see the view from the window at the very end, tracks leading back to where I came from.
I am a college co-ed…not a Delta felt up at a frat house or bouncing from my parent’s Jag onto campus,
But a Dominican immigrant, standing on the ground my older sister sowed and reaped for me so that I could take the chance she was not given and cross the precious threshold from family to world.
I am a working woman…not strutting in heels with a briefcase,
But strong and capable, like my mother who mopped floors, assembled staplers, sold clothes and raised strangers’ children so that I could simply sit at a desk and earn money manipulating my second, and now primary, language.
I am a traveler in the world…not flaunting all the vistas I’ve seen,
But flying through, with equal parts pride and incredulity at the stars that follow me from port to port, at the embraces that grace me at every lap of my journey.
I am, again, as I started…living by the sea…connected by the roll of the tide to my birthplace,
…to my mother swaying her hips with my father, to her lips breaking open, “te amo”… to the passion and resilience infused in my bloodstream….
I see her memory. I live my life. I am her dream.
Licet Ariza……October 13, 2009
CAS Licet 