that can toss your own first world’s hellscape

into the slop sink like a dirty rag—you shut

all the doors inside your mind to keep what you’ve left

alive—its terracotta lining the cracked callouses

in the soles of your feet, its afternoon rains

soaked into your scalp, a pinch of its raw cacao

on your tongue. You will try to pry the empire

you carry in your heavy steps from your feet,

from your skin like a gemstone from a king’s ring.

You will dream of leaning against a cornflower

blue wall in your yellow dress. No gray, white,

or beige houses like those lining every street in the land

of greed as if color were a sin greater than its bloody

stripes, dagger stars you have turned upside down.

You lock windows, so the memory of a woman in a passion

fruit skirt dancing alone at night on the cobblestone

street, guitar strums guiding her ritmo de puro gozo,

will never leave you. Forever, you will watch her feet tap

like roosters pecking, lift like chicks first learning to fly,

skip backwards like you did as a child who had nothing

to lose, your whole body so light, the wind, if it swept

around the corner in a sudden gust, could carry you

home or away.