See where the sun rises,
where rays sneak through bamboo branches and reveal the royal Avila,
where your guardian angel was born
and flew away before you got to meet him.

Walk into your home,
where your father and mother,
where your sister and brother,
drown in the numbness of a dinner table
with no conversation.
Go up your stairs,
smell the acrid humidity in your closet as
you clear your damp clothes and yellow post-it:
I’m sorry. We just can’t afford it.
Not yet.

Enter the palace of scarcity,
smell the desperation of your mother’s half empty plate,
of lines searching for food, medicine.
Your ID number is not 3, the register says.
You can only buy rice if it ends with three.
Step over the trash,
the sorrow,
the anxiousness dried in licked candy wrappers.
March through crowded streets,
Smell the vinegary scent of defeat as you
shout, curse, spill all your rage through
layered body sweat
and blurry protest prints, used as shields.
Choke on tear gas until you feel like
dying.

Watch the withered Avila light up in majestic flames,
Think of your guardian angel
celebrating inside someone else’s body
as you step into your quiet home, empty handed.