Ode to My Heart
"Because the whole point of a heart of flesh / Is that it feels everything"
This week, we are thrilled to share the third installment Norma Ramirez’s series of odes. Introducing her poem, Norma writes:
Ode to My Heart is the third poem in this series where I attempt to capture the cost of pursuing a PhD in clinical psychology as an undocumented student in the United States. I thought about the vulnerability and emotional cost that it took to leave and go to grad school when no one could understand my experience and the world that I came from and inhabited. This was then intertwined with the questions “What makes me human?” and “Will I let them take my humanity?”
“Ode to My Heart”
I have been avoiding
Thinking about you
My best guess is that
You’re probably the most vulnerable
Of me
When I think about what we all did
My hands, my feet, my brain and so forth
I come to the realization that
We were protecting you
My heart
I don’t know what it is about you
But you just believe
And you trust
And you give
And you love
Naively,
So so so naively
So you needed to be protected
And here, my therapist would be quick to remind me
Of the “heart of stone” turned flesh
So, yes,
My first effort to protect you was to
Turn you to stone
But this had consequences that I didn’t like
So I asked God for that heart of flesh
And this heart, too, has consequences
That I don’t like
But I think this one brings more good
Than the other
So I found other ways of protecting you
At least, I tried
But I think I mostly failed
Because the whole point of a heart of flesh
Is that it feels everything
But I cannot avoid you all the time
You demand to be noticed and heard
And I am trying to listen to you
Without you having to demand it
This upcoming week is the first step
Of the last steps- the Professional Psychology exam
And while I’m 90% sure I’ll pass
There is a pain that keeps coming up
Memories that I hadn’t thought of in years
During my first year,
When I went to Urth, got my Moroccan mint boba
And walked down Colorado St.
Because I needed to feel safe and comforted
And somehow, this drink gave me some of that
But when I got home
It wasn’t enough
So I went to sleep on my blanket of the universe
Desperately wanting to be held
All the times I drove up to San Jose
Not realizing that I was escaping Pasadena
Not realizing that it was making my life that much harder
And not realizing that I was giving you away when
I shouldn’t have
But that is how much we were hurting
We accepted anything that could make us forget
Then there were all the times that I had to drive back
To Pasadena from Vegas
And how much I hated it every single time
I would cry during some of those drives but
Especially when I came back right before
The SCOTUS hearing and my dissertation proposal
Because I could feel how I needed to muster so much strength
Out of the empty vessel I had become
I have learned and mastered the art of moving forward
And enduring when all signs indicate that it’s time to jump ship
So when my therapist asks me if “anything out of left field” has happened
Or how I am doing, I never know how to answer
Should I have put you through all of this?
Should I have called it quits and gone back home after the first year?
Everyone says that in order to follow your dreams,
You have to be ready to make sacrifices because they mold you into
The person that your dreams require
And while I believe that there is some truth to this
Because we do need to grow
There seems to be so much unnecessary suffering
In my journey
That I cannot honestly say that it was all worth it
I don’t know how to properly articulate it
But I feel and know that so much of me was taken
So much so, that I don’t even know what all was taken
I can’t even remember everything that happened
In the aftermath of all this,
I feel more like a wreckage than a person
I’m tempted to seal shut the door
To everything that happened in those 7 years
But,
My heart, you are wholly flesh
And you won’t let me forget
Propina
If you missed the first two poems in this series, you can listen to and read them here:
Describing the full series of poems, Norma writes:
I wrote these poems as a way to capture the cost of pursuing a doctorate while being undocumented in the United States. Once I had graduated, I realized that I need to reflect and process the past 7 years to allow space to heal. In the process, I also got licensed and that also brought up more feelings and dynamics. So, the series is a bit developmental, capturing pieces of the past, the present, and wonderings of the future.
Norma’s poetry series will continue next month. In the meantime, if you have a poem, story, image, or general idea you would like to share with La Cuenta’s readers, please get in touch.
We’ll see you next week!