Author: Dana Ordonez

Email: dordonezsanchez@gmail.com

Submission:

My mother use to take me to the houses on the other side

where the rich people lived.

A distant paradise where in the front yards stood divinely the white picket fences, 

And the picket signs with messages of love and hope. 

“Algún día tendremos una casa así”

Perhaps my mother told me this because it was her dream

Since the day she left her little village in the hilltops. 

My mother worked. 

I studied. 

I learnt about the great wonders of our glorious country.

If I work hard enough I’ll make it. I’d get the house on the other side. 

I never saw a girl like me as the kind of person to make it

Or someone like me. 

Mamá, gave her all for the other side. 

Mother, this country, these people aren’t our friends. 

The signs in their front yards don’t extend to us.

They patronize us, They take from us, They took me from you. 

I like to think that you sip on cafecitó with the familiar scent of what I use to hide. 

You are thinking of what I am on the other side. 

Mamá, I think of you when I roam these streets.