“What are you doing in my country?” the customs officer asks, as if to say: “Why have you come willingly Some don’t get to choose which home What is it when the child returns from their mother’s jewelry box— “What are you doing in my country?” my brother asks, laughing, you must spill your veins, too sprouting into tight tendrils that coil I could not give this place my childhood. Maybe that is why I lose while I trip over the vines that grasp I’ve been trying to escape. San Salvador, El Salvador Jennifer Velázquez is a Queer poeta en progress from Dallas, Texas. She is currently in her third year at the University of Texas at Austin studying Sociology with a certificate in Creative Writing.
Baggage Claim
leafing through my blank American passport,
into the arms of something your family has fought
so hard to escape?”
they leave behind.
to the abandoned house, pulls out the key
they’ve been keeping inside—a treasure stolen
and unlocks the door to the only home
they’ve never known?
as if to say: it is not enough
to have El Salvador
in your veins,
in El Salvador, and watch
as the blood trickles down
your leg and onto the ground,
around your feet, forever binding you
to the land, bound to carry it
wherever you go, but—
my balance on this ground, stumbling
behind my mother’s tranquil pace
as the plants carry her through
at my ankles and I think: I no longer know which homeAbout the Author
