Dolor y pasión codificados

How is it that my heart becomes illiterate in the language it knows?

No tear falls

No motivation climbs up my back

Unless it's far from my birthplace

In foreign grammars, every dream is tangible

In foreign expressions, all pain goes to an unknown land.

And they flow like saliva in my mouth: it's easier.

The throat doesn't recognize its own wounds or flowers when selling my feelings to another homeland, and that's why they don't get stuck there when they bleed or bloom.

All to stop feeling ugly

Or to allow myself to be intoxicated like a fleeting and real liquor-laced American kiss.

I am not disloyal, I don't deny my roots

I just yearn to let it all out, without the shame of my calluses or the ridiculousness of dreaming too big.