110
a conversation Alexandra Calleros
Beauty lives in solace, in the silent hum of subtle heartbeats. My heartbeat. In the solemn chords of a piano playing quietly. In the art of being my own. In the art of driving down open roads and staring into the unknown. I am a long way from homesomewhere along the thin lips of the city and the country- when I recall mourning Ritchie Valens and everything he briefly came to know. I recall hating him for singing about some white woman named Donna and not a paiza girl like Maria or Alejandra. A girl with some color, something a little familiar. A girl of our own kind. He was another paiza trading us for the other side. But maybe I’m the biggest hypocrite yet because I too have loved a white man instead of Mario or Alejandro. So while I left those feelings to simmer underneath the surface, I remember the liquid quick rush of falling into the craze of him. He was still, for all intents and purposes, completely paiza and proud with one slick piece of black hair that curled against his skin like the perfect color of warm baked pan. He had a voice that flowed from the United
