There’s a girl in Mexico

I’ve never met

Who wears my clothes

And I’m told cries with joy

Each time the old man

From her church

Drives up her dirt road

And delivers paper bags

Filled with clothes

From across the border

We are the same

Blouse and shoe size

Same pant size too

 

Nights I imagine her face

Made up from a million

Different shades that

Alternate between people

I’ve seen in passing

She’s a Sudanese woman

Wrapped in a cotton Shuka

And the woman from

Manhattan who wears red

Jeans and pink lipstick

She’s a Taiwanese girl

Who pulls her hair into two

Symmetrical pigtails that balance

On the crown of her head

Her body a map of the world

Up and down and around again

There are traces of her

Everywhere I’ve been

And everywhere I’ll never be

 

My tan shoes are

Strapped to her feet

The navy blue dress

I wore to my cousin’s graduation

Wraps around her like a second skin

Its skirt waving like a flag

Announcing her presence

In a place that knows no boundaries

It is here where I discover

The cobblestone streets from her home

Are the same that make up the roads in India

And that the trees from her village

Are the same that grow in Madagascar

Then there is the wind

That collects and intermixes

All our breaths

Until we become one giant organism

Without any of us ever realizing it

Massiel Ladrón De Guevara is a public information officer for a fire department in Southern California, where she lives with her husband and son. She studied Journalism at Pepperdine University and has an MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside. Her work has previously appeared in BorderSenses, Anderbo.com, Solstice Literary Magazine and the Whistling Fire.