in our little nothing town, either you were white or you were latino. mexican, we used to say, even the latino kids, like a joke, laughing at ourselves because that's the only thing americans are really good at. the white people were dull and sad and lumpy, moralistic protestants no matter how far from grace they fell. i always wanted to be one of the mexican girls. they seemed wilder and smarter and sexier and braver, seemed to have a secret and always something to laugh at, something salty to throw in the faces of the redneck boys.

i thanked the stars for my freckles, dancing uncontrolled across my shoulders and the bridge of my nose and down the back of my legs like a secret for each lover to discover, the one thing that hints that my blood might come from a place where they know how to drink and to grieve and to laugh all night and understand that sometimes emotion supersedes duty.

i will not die a little pale shadow at 113 years, kept alive by wheat grass and power walking. i want to be what i wanted those mexican girls to be, one of so many beautiful flames that the world should just spontaneously combust right here and now. i want a history long and dark as it is light and i want the trappings of a religion too old to be taken seriously always stirring a vein i can't quite control, that i should have begun to ignore in my twenties. and i want to speak a language that rolls out of your mouth like cigar smoke.

i realized, later, that soul isn't a birthright, that if i were latina i wouldn't necessarily be beautiful or a great lover or have a name like a single guitar, like a wax-stained altar or the pulsing hips of the moon. and just because i'm white doesn't mean i can't. i only wish my people would learn to live a little more.