“Mija, you’re doing it wrong.”
“Mija, why can’t you just listen?”
“Por favor! Ay help me, dios mio.”

Words of disappointment from the most admired woman in my 5 year old eyes.
She’d yell and hit.
“Quita la mano! Move your hand!”

After a while I stopped crying and she’d stand there with the belt, now useless.
Just another accessory, I guess.

But when she would yell
That’s where the real tears threatened to spill.
Shameful flames on my cheeks.
These were not reflexive tears, mementos from the belt, but tears so hard to hold back, you’d think I’d never breathe the same again.

I would keep my long lived streak of disappointment.
I would not show her tears.

She became my first heartbreak.
The reason I stood silently reaching for the butterknife I believed I could end my life with.

At the ripe age of 5, I held this butterknife out with the dull point aimed at my stomach because I thought, “She screams so much and it’s because of me. Why would I want to burden her so much so that these violent words come bursting out?”

I was too cowardly to do a thing.
A decade later, I finally found the courage.

The courage to end my pain and suffering ..
with the kind words of a friend.
I sliced at my skin ..
With silky blades of grass.
I cried ..
Tears of joy as I watched the most beautiful sunrise I would’ve never experienced if I’d been courageous enough of make one very important decision at age 5.

My first heartbreak let to my eventual mental repair.
I thank my mom for the verbal bullets she shot at me.
I can no longer feel them,
For the scars are too deep.

But my cowardice saved me
Whether I admit it happily or not.