Autopista José Antonio Páez

I wish I could braid your hair for school
tied to my ankles An ode to a boy in the green uniform.

Relic as gift, inscribed in the church of calypso
livers for the fantastical unreturn.
A red cap that does not fit your hair.
El profe and I get stopped at the end of this via crucis I was born

with a mouth That bites a wound paralyzed in governance.
You are but a tooth of your parishless prophet
        You know his fictions
        I know your ordains
I must bargain my tendons so you can stand
by my body on the table of my back to create something

new: A question. My hair recoils from the obedience in the grasp.
Arm to trigger, the legacy of beauty at the GNB. You will release
my joints with the same blade you cut my cousin’s ear, confused
for a shell in the wrong sea, both 19 and deaf to your own blood
Extending cruelty will be the monolith that extends us shredding

your flesh feeding the gun for your permission to enter Auyán’s stolen scale
would you have written or touched, do you still sing?
I must weigh your heart to condemn you: How old were you when they left?
We will replace those departed. You take us out back and trespass
Our dignity, we forgive you even then: you are a person too

Finally I turn to my father in a gaze huella en huella I place a promise, a hand over
The window fragmented in our sweat. I would send for zephyrus if I could speak.
I would send for relief si me dejarias poder, I am a nun nulled to a sold return
You are a monk in green, violenced to a lie of glory, about me in honor
of being a woman: in exchange for my price Quinimari rushes to salvage

obsolete heroes. In another life we would’ve given you fruit.
Our salvation untouched but in deherozing exhale, you knight
me another breath,

I suffocate a thank you.

–Valeria Rodrigo

Valeria Rodrigo is a writer from Valencia, Venezuela. She is currently studying at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been featured or is forthcoming in Foglifter, Azahares, and Hayden Ferry's Review.