Pocho

Santiago Ureña

Tattoo art: Genevieve Caron

No me existe la palabra
en español to tell my
mother I’m
queer. Trans.
These words
are loans, which,
like long overdue
library books,
have become
mine because I have
kept, creased
and memorised
them. But they
weren’t written in
the language we speak
to each other.
They squat on my
tongue, foreign,
son pochismos,
incómodos, awkward
reminders of
the way mi acento
always takes a little
time to adjust to
the altitude, the way
my voice is still
shaped by fronteras.
No me existe la manera
or the means, or the
fluency. I am lost
in translation.