【Written by Malynnae Bustos】

The little bell 
at the top of the door dings as it swings 
open. The smell of fresh baked donuts 
fills the room, fills my nose. 
Sweet bread. 
To everyone else in our neighborhood
Pan Dulce.
To my mom, to me, Sweet Bread. 
No spanish. 

Spanish gives you an accent, 
accents mean you are treated second tier
To those whose words leave their mouths —sharply.
I learned to make my words sharp, “articulate”
colonizers, teachers, would praise me.

Sweet Bread, not pan dulce. 
Rice pudding, not arroz con leche.
Mexican-American, not Mexican.

Mom and Dad grew 
where the Mexican and Texas deserts kiss
at the Rio Grande River.
Their shoulders heavy from absorbing the —border region 
like a Concha, soggy from the milk it is —dunked in.
My family and I, living in a state of —–translation.
No Spanish.

No Spanish?
Tu no hablas español?
Struggle to understand the words
I feel the sting of scorn
when another person with brown skin 
tells me I am not a real Mexican, 
unable to produce the smooth, 
musical words of the language.
Reduced to fake, plastic, synthetic,
counterfeit.
The chain restaurant version of 
the authentic street food of the ———-motherland.
Disconnected from the culture that lives on my skin
the color of Cafe con crema.

Pan Dulce tumbles off my lips
and lingers on my tongue
like the bitter aftertaste of burnt coffee
sipped from a styrofoam cup
after a Sunday morning sermon
delivered entirely in Spanish.
I wonder if God weighs English prayers 
just the same.

My second-grade teacher reduced Mexican —history
to thirty minutes of genocide, ————colonizers, and corrupt generals.
Manifest Destiny, manifest disappointment. 
“Remember the Alamo,”
Forget that it sits on stolen land.
It will take me a decade to discover 
the laughter used to endure violence.

The glass case stretches on 
as long as the peoples’ history.  
The assortment of Sweet Bread it contains is
vibrant like the culture which bore it. 
The treats as colorful 
as the fiestas in La Ciudad de México. 
Milk, 
sugar, 
flour. 
Simple ingredients,
like my ancestors used, 
cooking in clay pots under the sun 
and creating poetry.

The tastes created withstand time, 
generational trauma, love and laughter.
In every batch of Sweet Bread 
la Familia is stirred into the dough, 
celebration braided into every twisty donut, 
revolution powdered over each cookie. 
Sweet Bread or Pan Dulce,
it tastes just the same.

I pick up the donut,
soft crinkles and sprinkles escape
from the tissue paper it rests on.
Take a bite,
I taste the Spanish.
Take another,
I taste the English. 
I savour both flavors,
It is delicious.