Water Body
BIO
Aleyda Marisol Cervantes, or Mari for her familia, is a self-identified third-world woman, who grew up in a small town in Mexico. She attended Fairhaven College with major titled “Solidarity Across borders: Understanding Experiences and Imagining New Realities through Storytelling” and a minor in education and social justice. She is TEDx presenter. Her work appears in PALABRITAS, Gendering Globalization, Globalizing Gender: Postcolonial Perspectives & the upcoming anthology We Need a Reckoning. .
Instagram: @raices_press
The white woman at
the pharmacy said she couldn’t understand me. Speak louder
through my mask and
repeated my words again and again. I can’t understand you she
repeated.
Then all of sudden
I’m eighteen years old at an immigration appointment trying to tell
a sad story
that wasn’t really sad; Then, I’m twenty three years old at my first job
interview feeling all the wrong answers come out of my mouth wishing I was
smart;
then I am sixteen years old in a white classroom with sweaty hands
praying I didn’t
have to read next, watching my peers with a “you are not from
here” all over their
face; then I’m twenty five years old getting yelled at by
a grown men in the middle of
an office; then I am my uncle getting pull over by
border patrol; then I am my mother
crying in the car after getting fired from
her job.
Then I am myself in
this skin,
hiding under
wandering tongues,
earthquake felt
accents
shaking me from
inside,
reminding everyone
this body is an ocean
and this language is
made of water