0 
0 Lupi the Rattlesnake
Written by Guadalupe Vial Ulloa
I stand up in a foreign room
In this icy continent so far from mine,
and I cry thinking of all the ones
that I left behind in burning land.
I talk in a strange tongue
a language that makes my throat burn,
my feet hurt all day long
by the stairs I met two weeks ago.
I am no one,
not a friend or a daughter,
nor a lover or a sister.
Just a mispronounced name in the system.
New names,
new culture.
Old habits,
old torture.
ADHD
my best friend since first grade,
the reason I lost a tooth
and the reason I learned English.
Depression,
the scars I try to hide,
the reminder of a horrible past
of secrets that were thrown at me without being asked.
Anxiety,
I’m an alien in a town of humans.
No name, no history.
My language, my weakness.
Guadalupe
died in an airplane flying to Canada.
Lupi took her shell
shed her skin like a snake.
She now slithers
between the rattlesnakes
she warns the deer
but they do not seem to care
Too late
they’re poisoned,
the bite taken
the bond thickens.
Sinner,
demon,
faker
and cheater.
First Circle:
Hanging between two worlds culture or education
past or future.
Second Circle:
Everyone has a label
everything has a name.
What is mine? Where do I stand?
Third Circle:
No breakfast, too much for lunch I look fat
no dinner tonight.
Fourth Circle:
Will they steal my ideas?
my words, my property
I cannot trust nobody.
Fifth Circle:
Do you have a problem with my accent? You do not know our history,
our struggle and suffering.
Sixth Circle:
Give my back to the church
my face to God
Am I Judas, or am I an individual?
Seventh Circle:
I use hard words
in an attempt at dominance.
Nobody can bring me down.
Eight Circle:
Am I white, or am I not?
Does my skin deny my nationality? Do my veins show a sign of colonialism?
Ninth Circle:
They are in pain,
and I left them.
Beaten while I am educated.
How can I try to make their pain disappear? I forget about the mapping assignment I need to go back
I need to save them.
But what will be of me?
Of the people that I save in my dreams? if I don’t come back
Am I sentencing my people to death? I drift asleep with dark clouds over my head
and wake up excited for a new day.
The letters dance through the rooms
bringing colour and music.
They are a childhood dream come true the stars that yesterday seemed so far away are today on my hands.
A reality I thought I would never live.
Fiat Lux
“Let there be light.”
The light goes through my body
as the blood that one day dripped from my veins
It burns in the best way,
like alcohol down my throat.
Addicting
is the best name.
Here I am not a victim,
of the brother who abused my body.
But a survivor,
of the challenges God has given me.
I cannot escape my trauma,
his handprints seem marked on my body. My childhood was stripped away from me for years, but my adulthood will not be taken away.
The darkness lifts when I sit down
in the room of deer
where the letters dance
where I am nobody.
This is my adventure,
My epic poem
Of an epic life,
I will build for myself.
