Looking in the mirror I try my best to emulate you, the way you drew borders around your lips was like watching math teachers draw perfect circles. It was an effortless fluid movement done in one stroke, almost without looking. My mouth shows that I have yet to be so swift, I must still look at every stop and start of my pencil, I must pause to regain the steady rhythm of the strokes that I mimic from my memories of you. I feel constantly like a child who is trying to understand who I am, but more importantly, what does that answer to that question mean?

I fumble through the journey of decolonizing my mind and take up the space to understand that who I am was just a recent momentous effort that has made substantial progress. In my struggle with being an Afro-Latina and not speaking Spanish, I have many nights, stayed up and wondered where was home? I can understand Spanish, and say a few words, but I am nowhere near fluent. Not being able to speak Spanish has always been the coat on the hanger at night, if you look too closely it can morph into a monster, but if you pay it no mind it still is just that same coat on the hanger. I felt like I was an imposter, a sad lackluster representation of the mother that I knew and loved who were sharp and strong and had passion in their words that only the most beautiful Colombian women could carry. Their anger could cut like a knife, and their love could hold the world.

My tongue misshapes the delicate Y's and silent letters that are barely whispered to oneself so they don’t loose their way. I look in the mirror to see you, hoping to purse my lips in the way you did when you cursed my father. I move my red stained lips like you when you hid your pain, yet these lined lips played the note only to realize my instrument had never been tuned. I frustrate myself when I try to prove that I am Latina enough. I worry that I will disconnect and colonialism will continue to take, and take.

I move my feet across cherry wood floors and to the bellowing cry of your father's song. I feel my heart race, and my hips shake.

I cannot mouth it but I can taste it. I reach out for you through the mirror and I know that my hands have been on my own all along.

I wished to be heard, but I needed to be seen. Not being able to speak to you the way you spoke to your mother and the way she spoke to hers hurts. I come home and look into your eyes. I don’t know if you'll wipe away the red from my face. You reach for my hands smiling and say, “I see more of you in me every day.” I realize that words in whatever form of language they come can be beautiful, and be enough. I wasn't disconnected or broken. Just saying I love you in ways that are new to our lineage. Te Amo, I love you, Lo Siento.

I still don’t draw the line as good as you, but now I almost don’t need to look.