Allison Hernandez
Allison’s Poems
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They call her “La Muralla”
As her sweat pours into this foundation
She is the great wall of strength,
built brick by brick by the callus-ridden hands of immigrants.
Uplifted by rosaries and whispered prayers to La Virgen de Guadalupe,
Brought to life by mami and papi’s sacrifices,
And the unforgiving tongue of abuela
As a thousand unspoken ancestral promises
Echo into the ground where she stands
Those that try to tear her down
They say–
“Cabrona.”
“Bitch.”
Ruidosa
“Too loud.”
Atrevida
“Too Bold.”
Del barrio
“Too ghetto.”
TOO MUCH
Those that build her up
Paint their devotion onto her surface
And engrave into her what they will try to protect
Brilliance.
Resilience.
The backbone.
The strong one.
The overcomer.
La Muralla
The girl that stands in her power.
she was never made to be human,
She could never fracture.
But even walls get tired.
Her concrete dreams to crumble
to become something softer beneath the surface.
They never taught her how to be gentle–
Only to be rigid, solid, unbreakable
This is her only way of survival.
To bite her tongue,
To laugh through grief,
To carry generational trauma like groceries, never letting one bag drop
I hold cans of repressed emotions that rupture when mom feels too deeply
The potato sacks that drowned my fathers dreams
putting food on the table at the cost of his voice
Serving us silence for dinner
As abuelita’s cooking made way into our hungry bellies
Tasting of both love and loss
Because abuelo left
We have to savor the emptiness he never came back to fill
I hold it all with swollen arms
“Pressure that’ll tip, tip, tip, till you just go pop”
even when La Muralla is at her limit
“Give it to your sister, it doesn’t hurt”
Even when her knees tremble
“See if she can handle every family burden”
Because who else will carry it, if not her?
They built her to endure,
She does not know how to rest.
She is meant to be the pillar,
But she never had support herself
This wall is a cage to keep her small
They crowned her La Guerrera, a great warrior,
But never asked if she wanted the war.
And when she weeps–
They call it weakness.
When she loves herself–
They call it egotistical.
When she says no–
They call it attitude.
And when she finally ruptures–
They pretend not to see.
But I am not your Great Wall of strength.
I am the girl behind the thickness of the brick.
I am the softness and vulnerability they never made room for.
My tears cleanse this tough exterior
My exhaustion is passed down like a family heirloom as
My rage was forced under a polite smile
The fists that clutch so tight, they forgot how to open.
Engraving crescent moons in my palms as
Knuckles turn white from the pressure of holding everything in —
Everything I was never allowed to feel.
And today–
I let myself crack
So light can finally seep in.
A beacon of hope that burns in my chest
I let myself rest
Because survival is not the same as living
I let myself feel
Because tears are not failure–
They are freedom.
La Muralla finally cracked– and inside, a woman bloomed.
-
They tell me I’m not Mexican enough.
They say I'm not Mexican enough, but my caramel skin, kissed by the sun like my ancestors, tells a different story
and the blood that runs through my veins are direct roots to them,
Not American enough because my skin screams heritage.
I am not Mexican enough to speak with my abuelita in Spanish,
So I must watch the disappointment bloom on her face while I fail to muster a proper response
When my Spanish tongue falters, I remember, this language is still a colonizers
We have always been denied the language that should have been ours.
Weighted by the pressure of assimilation across generations.I am left robbed of my own culture (let go)
Left to question my own identity
Because the creation of Mexican-American is a white man's legacy
according to the eyes of society, I am Mexican enough in blood, but not in language,
I feel like a stranger in my own skin.
I grew up eating tacos, pozole, birria, y esquite, I grew up singing to Vincente Fernandez and dancing to cumbias
but I existed in “El otro lado”
The otherside
I am Mexican-American
I am Mexican vs American
In the comfort of our shared pulse on the dancefloor
I find peace, - dancing
But in the mix of different languages, I feel misplaced,
Stuck between worlds, not fitting in anywhere
I'm lost in my own identity as it is riddled with pronunciation errors
Because I struggle speaking a colonizer’s language
They tell me I'm not Mexican enough, but what does it mean to be "enough" of anything?
Is it measured in the richness of my hue, or the fluency of my speech?
I carry the weight of centuries on my shoulders,
The echoes of my ancestors whispering in my ears,
Their struggles, their triumphs, their sacrifices,Are engraved into the very fabric of my being.
Though I may stumble over syllables and lack the ability to roll my r’s,my spirit sings in the language of my roots.
My voice echoes like the ocean crashing against the cliffs of Acapulco,
The same waves that used to embrace my mother
Are now demanding to be heard.
My mother is a fierce soul from the city where the reeds were washed away
Her song guides me, planting seeds of hope
Her stories are the riptide that shaped my determination, her strength built my pride.
I refuse to be confined by standards made to contain me, for my soul knows no boundaries.
I am whole.
And I am proud of who I am.
I can identify with both of my cultures, each one is vital to me.
My identity is not a box to be checked nor a stereotype to be worn.
My heritage pulses through my veins, an unstoppable beat that dances to its own rhythm,
Unafraid.
Unapologetically.
I am the revolutionary, the activist, fighting for justice with unwavering passion and courage.
Language barriers cannot silence my call for change.I find home, regardless of the words we speak.
So tell me I'm not "enough" if you must,But know that I am whole and proud and that I am the embodiment of my heritage.
I am Mexican
Soy Mexicana.
