Swaying,
Heat pressing into my skin,
The same winged creature circling my face and then landing on the very tip of my nose,
Air thick like a milkshake.
When the rain comes,
Landing with a thud,
Like a bag of sand dropping from the roof of a house,
The animals can breathe,
I can breathe,
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh,
Even the crickets let out a sigh,
Pounding like a drum,
Pounding like the same dream every ******* night,
The capybaras and wooly monkeys with their hunched shoulders and squinting eyes,
Let the branches and leaves heave around them,
Verdant,
And flashing,
A globe of bubblegum,
The rain always comes.

The ***** children in the street
have no shoes for their tiny feet
Their mothers cry in nightly pain
hoping for a little rain
Shaving heads to avert the lice
eating handfuls of wild grain rice
Dressed in rags that cover their skin
to ignore these kids is quite the sin
Feed their bellies and give them hope
make them strong and able to cope
Teach compassion and how to give
give them all a reason to live

You tip-toe out of the day
out of the Atlantic Ocean

with Africa's sun on your brown skin
with Africa's wind grazing your dark hair

and all of South America behind you.
Had North America and Europe

had enough sense
they would have followed, too.

Had they known of everything good
tucked away in your womb

then surely surely
they would have followed, too.