wildscape. literary journal

Joy in the wrong language can make you a target
by Diana Corrales Jaramillo

Something essential in me needs to change
so the living can keep living.

I am aware of this not as theory,
but as fear that rides with me in the car,
as documents I carry like talismans
because my skin is read before my words.

I keep my license on me at all times.
I carry an expired passport everywhere I go
because it costs too much to renew
and because proof of who I am feels necessary now.
Because brown skin is always one question
away from being asked to justify itself.

This is what this country looks like right now.
I drive with a bumper sticker that says:
no one is illegal on stolen land.
That sticker has made me rehearse what I will say
if red and blue lights bloom behind me.
It has taught me how quickly conviction turns into calculation.
But this is not the moment to take it off—
this is the moment to ask for more.
More safety. More accountability. More humanity.

This is what this country looks like right now.

My partner is white.
She does not carry proof in her bag.
She does not rehearse her words for a traffic stop.
She does not calculate the cost of being visible.

I love her.
And sometimes I am angry at the ease of her safety.
Angry that her body moves through this country
without being questioned, followed, or explained.

This anger does not cancel love.
It names the truth:
even in intimacy, the ground beneath us is uneven.

I no longer play Spanish music loudly in my car.
Not because I stopped loving it,
but because loving it out loud has consequences.
Because culture has been marked as suspicious.
Because joy in the wrong language
can make you a target.

My mother is a legalized U.S. citizen.
And still I wonder—
will that be enough?
Will her citizenship protect her
when she speaks Spanish in a grocery store,
when she helps translate for someone who needs it?
Or will it be treated as temporary, conditional, revocable?

This is what this country looks like right now.

I have been shouted at.
I have been spit on—
saliva on my cheek for translating a sentence,
for helping someone understand what was being asked of them.
I was called “trash” for standing beside another human being.
This is not misunderstanding.
This is violence.

ICE is not abstract.
ICE is violence with a badge.
It exists to make fear routine,
to break families efficiently,
to teach people how to disappear quietly.
It depends on silence to keep operating.

One bullet is all it takes.
One disagreement with a masked agent,
a coward hiding behind authority.
One bullet. One boom.
That’s all it takes to erase one of my loved ones.

What must change in me is this:
I can no longer be quiet to stay safe.
I can no longer make myself smaller
to keep others comfortable.
Politeness does not protect us.
Silence does not save lives.

I don’t know the correct way forward.
There is no manual for surviving a country
that keeps asking who deserves to stay alive.
But I know what comes next.

I speak plainly.
I refuse to soften what is happening.
I let my anger exist without apology.
I let my grief be visible.

Something essential in me chooses truth over safety.

I will not make this easier to hear.
I will not look away.
This is what this country looks like right now.

about the author // Diana Corrales Jaramillo