She's not Ours.

Yenny was a strange girl.

At the age of six she asked her mother where god came from and if he had parents and if he didn't have parents then how was he born? Oh and why do we have to believe in Jesus, followed by can I believe in everything? She soon learned not to ask those questions.

Instead she lost herself in a deep love for space. Dreamt of swimming through star dust and often wondered if there was anything at the other end of a black hole. She dreamt of tree houses in the Amazon rainforest, of the songs Tibetan women sang but only ever woke up to the sound of police sirens.
            She fell in love with the lake the first time they took her. Tried to keep the waves in her socks, hid sand and shells beneath her feet trapped between toes. And god was she obsessed with the Moon! Some times she heard things and saw people who weren't really there. Her mother told her she was crazy, "Ghosts! There's no such thing." So she told them to go away and stop talking because she didn't want to be crazy. Instead she closed her eyes and told stories.

She felt inextricably connected to Native American spirituality and although she didn't know the word Cultural Appropriation, she felt it. Didn't think it was right to want something that wasn't hers to claim. At least until she learned about Mesoamerica.

Her teacher tried to sound out the words, "Lah-teen-ooh's are a mixture of Indian and European."
            She raised her hand, "Even Mexican's?"
            "Yes, even Mexicans." She raised her hand again, "Are you sure?"

That day she came home furious. Threw down her books and yelled, "WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?"

She decided that regardless of whether or not her parents would teach her, she would learn. Kept a journal full of Nahuatl words, following her father around armed with a new language. "Did you know we call kites papalote's because it comes from the Nahuatl word Papalotl which means butterfly? Oh and tecolote, that's Nahuatl too. We're not even speaking Spanish!" She learned immediately afterward that to be called Indian in Spanish was an insult not a source of pride. They hurled the word Indio! Like shame but she couldn't grasp how something so beautiful could be seen as so unworthy.
            It dawned on her that night why they kept her hair so long, past her waist and braided. She stared at the food on her plate. Corn every where… Why didn't she ever notice? Most importantly why didn't they?

Her parents never said it but she could read it in their eyes, "Where did that girl come from? She's not ours."

But even as they thought it, they knew she came from a place deep within them, a place so secret they had no idea when they'd left it open. She must have flown out when they were sleeping… Yes, when they were sleeping… That girl was so full of dreams they were surprised she didn't fly backwards and melt into the Sunrise.

At 12 she discovered a deep tranquility, an unimaginable Happiness the day she saw a statue of a Buddha. She closed her eyes in class; saw him standing their glowing golden at the end of a long tunnel. She felt warm in his light. So she read and read… four noble truths, eight fold path, Boddhisattvas and Buddha Nature… She felt centered, at peace, became a Buddhist and decided she want to be a monk.
            Here parents yelled, "What did we do wrong? We're failures!"
She cried in the bathroom for hours. Didn't understand why something that made her so happy could make them so angry. After months of not talking to her the pain in her chest festered into anger. She learned to recite Om Mani Padme Hum, in her Solitude hoping to become familiar with forgiveness.

She became closely acquainted with Compassion, "See, yourself in others then whom can you hurt?" Stopped eating meat and called the animals in her home brothers and sisters. At 16 she became a Capoerista, dedicated herself fiercely even though women weren't supposed to do those things. "You'll never be as strong as a man."

Still she sang Capoeira songs as if they sprouted from her soul. Played her Berimbau in the backyard beneath the pear tree till calluses formed on her fingers. The day she got hurt and had to leave no understood her devastation. She wrote stories and poems, sang songs and spoke in languages her parents didn't care to understand. Sanskrit, Nahuatl, Portuguese.

She still wanted to become a Buddhist Monk until she became a danzante at 20 and fell in love.

There beneath the full Moon, Sacred Grandmother, she accepted half his orange. Poor thing was too idealistic, too naïve, too open. She forgot to look at his eyes. It wasn't until it was too late that she looked up and realized he was the wrong person. She forgot about Buddhism and Self Love. By the end she was left a battered and emotional fragment.

She crawled away from that relationship, fractured, sowing together bleeding ventricles and promised that never again would she loose her center. Promised not to fall in love unless she looked into the next mans pupils. Next time she wouldn't forget to look into his eyes.

She went to sweats watched as fired warmed stones in an attempt to recover her light. She sang at all night ceremonies, camped beneath the milky way, prayed with the Tree at Sundance and fell asleep to the sound of a water drum as songs slipped from Medicine ceremonies into Sunrise.
            She danced beneath the Moon, called her grandmother as if a piece of rock in the sky could possibly be a person. She offered prayers through tobacco smoke, the embers in her obsidian pipe flickering. She talked to the water, carrying it close to her womb like a child. She started to see people again but this time she welcomed them and said, "Tlazocamati, ancestors. Thank you for your teachings."

The older she became the greater the look in their eyes intensified, "She's not ours."
            Oddly enough the more she grew the more she realized she was. Saw the holes she sprang from, the gaping space in the middle of their chests that was shaped like her body.

Maybe she reminded them too much of the things they wanted to become. Reminded them too much of the dreams they thought they'd some day stop dreaming. And she forgave them. Understood that sometimes there are dreams you don't want to remember.