When I was trapped and taken away
from the wetlands, it felt like stepping outside
a freezing movie theater in August
somewhere near Death Valley, where airstreams
are the fumes of ten thousand blow dryers
and the sun is within walking distance.
All I could do was panic with the others piled over me
inside the crate. The trapdoor fell open.
We were dropped onto a conveyor belt and transported
to a purging tank where they held us in shallow pools
of water with citric acid and baking soda.
My skin was bleached the color of blood orange.
I had never felt so pure.
Minutes later a group of us were trapped inside
a burlap sack cinched with a drawstring.
There must have been a hundred of us
sacked together, unable to move. We were one hundred
muscle spasms covered in bone, fighting to maintain a pulse.
After our redeye to Cincinnati, we were released
into a cooler of water in the bed of a pickup truck.
The next time the cooler opened, we were in the backyard of
a home filled with happy white people, men and women
speaking English to one another with no distinct accent.
Laughing children with missing teeth
surrounded the cooler. They scattered
once a man wearing latex gloves stood over us.
I was lifted from the reservoir, and the air outside was hot
and humid like it is back home. I could hear a boiling
sound like gumbo on a burning stove,
and every breath I took tasted like propane and lemon.
As the fat bearded man led me away from the cooler,
I noticed a shirtless guy with a tattoo of
Jesus on his chest and a can of beer in his hand.
He was teaching a toddler how to hold one of my own,
how to remove its head and crack its body in half.