Let’s pretend I don’t exist

​Rinconcito is a special little corner in Somos en escrito for short writings: a single poem, a short story, a memoir, flash fiction, and the like.

Call me Lil Coffee Bean aka Exotic Fruit
(A quick reflection on being a drop of coffee in a cup full of cream)

By Estefanía Giraldo

Call me Niña
NO,
Pinta,
NO,
Santa Maria
Maybe just Maria... Don’t call me santa I’m not a saint.
 
When I die:
Anoint my lips with mango juice and a little bit of warm aguapanela, so that even in death
I’ll think of my mother.
Wrap me in hojas de platano como un tamal, and float me down the Magdalena.
Float with Magdalena.
Mary and Magdalene. Mary Magdalene.

I’ve lost track of what I look like.
My skin, hair, eyes, lips, nose.
Just rooms full of Marias
Let’s pretend I don’t exist,
Then you don’t have to call me anything at all.
 
When I was 18:
my boyfriend at the time told me he liked that we were in an interracial relationship.
That I was exotic. Unlike other girls.
Standing at the kitchen sink I took a second, then a breath.
The soap dish slithered from my hands, sending shards both seen and unseen.
All these years I thought we grew together, roots entangled but
mine had built bars around me, for safe keeping
while his had built a pedestal from which to better observe me.
 
Inside, in the place I can’t reach, but only feel.
I was the hand in front of my own face.
I had seen converging rivers, while he had seen–
well I don’t even know,
When we had sex I could only ever cum if I was on top.
That’ll show him.
Show him what?
 
I’ve lost track of what I look like.
 
At 21:
I slept with a woman, she was like me.
Don’t tell my mother. Don’t break her heart.
I let her lips close ‘round the roundness of my–
My lips on the wetness of her–
Ran my tongue down the valley-
I thought I saw–
***
God. Oh god.
Salt of my salt.
Afterwards we lay in bed together, thighs pressed against thighs and
I had to swallow hard at the lump in my throat when I realized
I couldn’t really love her because
I couldn’t love myself.
 
What do I look like?
 
Somewhere in the middle of the ocean of time and space there’s a transatlantic graveyard where drums reverberate in cool Atlantic waters.
Even after all this time,
We carry those rhythms in the beating of hearts, the beating of dancing steps.
These trees have been ripped out, roots raw and bloody seeking fertile grounds,
These roots seeking the warmth of a familiar sun,
The warmth of a familiar song.

I tried to grow on this rocky presbyterian mountain range, but no matter how much you water,
Guava trees will never give apples. ​

Estefanía Giraldo is a Colombian-American actor, writer, and museum educator based in New York City. She is a graduate of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and has spent the last few years working at the Tenement Museum, a museum dedicated to highlighting the history of immigration to the United States and the stories of working class immigrant families from the 19th-21st centuries. Her writing explores the intersections of gender, race, language and migration.

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