We Were Never Meant to Disappear

We Were Never Meant to Disappear

By Sinai Campuzano Martinez 

I come from where pavement holds stories and walls

speak in color.

Where struggle don’t mean defeat, 

It means fight. 

East Side San José, 

where the air smells like carne asada and resistance, where lowriders

cruise like memories 

of ancestors who never got to rest. 

I was raised by hands worn from labor, by mujeres who

turned survival into love, who folded their dreams into

tortillas 

and fed them to kids 

they prayed they would break the cycle. By men who

never cried

but carried sorrow in silence,

working themselves raw 

so we could rise. 

But they don’t see that. 

They see stats, 

see our brown skin, and assume less. 

Less worthy. 

Less capable. 

Less human. 

They build walls around our bodies 

and fences around our minds. 

Tell us we don’t belong.

Tell us to leave, 

as if our roots ain’t in this soil. 

I sit in classrooms 

where my story is missing, 

where my tongue feels too loud, 

where I’m the only brown face in a sea of silence. But I won’t

shrink. 

I dig my roots deeper. 

I am made of prayers, 

of rage,

of sacrifice. 

They say college is my way out, but I

don’t want a way out. I want in. 

To take space. 

To rewrite what they tried to erase. 

Because we’ve always been here. And we’re

not going anywhere.

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