Diego, Why Are You Smiling?

In the arms of your rescuers

your chest does not hurt.

The sun blinds your eyes,

you smile at the sky.

Diego Arellano, why are you smiling?

Do you know… Do you understand

that you are dying?

What do you see?

Is the sky talking?

Can you see our future?

Is Venezuela going to be free?

The smoke of tear bombs,

thousands of people screaming,

and several explosions

hide your killer.

The banner beside you said: No more violence!

A bullet goes through your favorite red

Caracas Futbol Club shirt

to your thirty-year-old chest

and your heart stops, but you smile.

A fatal morning, another protest.

Again, thousands of Venezuelans

asking for elections, for a real democracy.

Venezuelans are tired of die,

we are literally starving,

newborns don’t start their lives

because of lack of medicines.

Each year twenty-five thousand are killed.

It has been eighteen years of dictatorship,

a life of suffering.

Diego, you knew the death

walking between protesters.

Your love for your country

was bigger than your fear.

I feel ashamed of myself

I just write poems.

We lost you, and since April

we lost Jairo, Carlos Jose,

Andreina, Miguel, Diego

Anderson, Luis, Yeison, Jesus,

Armando, Ana, Angel, Renzo…

We have lost eighty Venezuelans

in eighty days,

and tomorrow will be more.

We lose a Venezuelan each day

by protesting, and s seventy-seven

because of violence and hungry.

I wrote our future

and you are not there.

I never met you,

I only have a picture of you

but I miss you, cry you.

I lost a part of me

when that bullet took you.

I’ll never have your peace, bravery,

love, and never that smile.