filled with whatnots – colored pencils, rubber snakes

and piles of blue and red clay dough.

Rumors and dulled, blank stares of coworkers fill the air.

“I didn’t think they would go that far.”

You now do a cameo as the missing in your own life.

Fourteen years teaching the children of privileged,

foreign and the poor ones; grandchildren of gran

elder women, wearing tall, tan Peruvian hats.

Santiago, you already reaped promise once hidden

in your student visa, now faded with regret.

For too long there was no need to renew it,

no pressure to become a citizen in a place

you had a permanent visitor status.

In the end you have been given ten days

to leave the U.S. deported back to Guatemala.

*The Disappeared