Like you I am a complexity

A paradox of caramel skin and perceptiveness

Like you I go against the typical expectations for a Latin girl

I speak when not spoken to, I laugh at your ridiculous ideas unapologetically, I scorn your supposed ‘intelligence’

Ugh, you say, look at her with her RBF and know-it-all airs and head held high

Better than you? You think. Not possible, though she may think she is

Not possible because I am Latin, is what you mean to say but don’t

Because like me, you are aware of what you say, you are aware of the way the world perceives outspoken brown girls like us

You know that the expectations for a Hispanic woman will forever be infinitely different than the expectations for a black girl, or a white girl, or an Asian girl, or any other girl of any other race

You understand that our race goes ignored and misheard, much more than most

You realize the consequences for a girl that is unafraid, unaffected, untouchable but yet somehow does not have pale skin

You, like me, are unapologetically you and have faced the wrath of many others for it

Because you, like me, are female

Are colored

Are Hispanic

Are Latina

Cannot pass for white because your skin is too dark, and cannot pass for black because your skin is too light, yet at the same time even my own kind shuns me, because seeing as Hispanics come in so many varying shades it is impossible for me to ever be the right one

Have spent your life trying to fit in but at the same time be strong and powerful and smart and you

You, like me, know the struggle

Because a fiery, feisty, outspoken, angry, brilliant Latin girl is not wanted in this world where old white men lord over power and shy, quiet, colored women labor behind the scenes doing the real work

Because a girl young and fresh, full of shocking opinions and a determination to change the world, is not accepted in the society we live in

You know this

I know this

We both know it well

It is the truth we have spent our lives trying to work against, to prove wrong, 

Like you, I have spent a lifetime desperately clinging to the edge

Like you, I know the exact details of the words people say to shove you down, to discourage you, in an attempt to pull every morsel of power from your fingertips

Like you I have fought long and hard, vying for the top

And it is you I have fought against, you amidst countless others

All of us striving for the top

But you and I, we are set aside from the rest

We are the ones always there, always trying, always working and fighting and straining and competing

And yet what we both fail to realize is that it doesn’t matter which of us wins our long, hard-fought battle

For we are one and the same.