Raices

Natalie Hernandez

photo credit: Melissa Bailey

If I have learned anything in my twenty-nine years of life,
it’s to make the best of your situation​ with what you have around you.
So thanks to my Dominican roots, I’ve made multiple sancochos​
with the failed relationships my heart has harbored.

Truth is, I should have starved these men
instead of feeding their ego & catering their every need. I’ve had mixes of heaven & hell in my soups:
men who knew how I needed to be loved,
and bowls of men who didn’t know how to love at all.

What they saw in me was a woman eager to feed their hunger​,
but that came at a price neither was willing to pay.
When do you feed the feeder?
When does she become catered to after being stripped of all her love
without leaving any for herself to indulge?

Did I mix in my self-worth with the sazon?
They couldn’t​​ lay me down​,​ so they fled until ​they landed yet another soup kitchen that​ ​came with a bed.
I’m not sorry my heart was so full that each spoonful of my roots came with a piece of my heart too.

I won’t apologize for the way I tried to love you
that made you grow tired of me.
The way my mother, tias, cousins, grandmothers taught me​.​

Either you do everything with love, or not at all.
My hands are tied now, there’s no more to stew​.
My heart isn’t food for fools who have no intention of cooking too.

Natalie Hernandez is a Dominican writer originating from Queens, NYC. She has been writing poetry since 2005, and has been published twice since 2019 (Alone at the Round Table and Vuela are both available now on Amazon). Her passion for poetry comes from her love for hip hop, and the love of the art of writing itself. Writing has always been her way of escaping reality, but also becoming in tune with it.