My wife often talks about her childhood, and the paper parakeets taped to the walls of the Ecuadorian consulates. 
- -
Decades later, I find myself within these yellow office buildings, amongst rows of chairs broken up by men with their heads down. Paperwork rolls around and around in all of our hands. A shuffling chorus amongst the pews. Children climb and tumble across the neatly lined plastic seats as the parakeets watch above. Blown by the building ventilation, a single strip of tape holds them in the room's heavens. 
- -
I've never been sure what I believe in. 
I do know
days after the election
this room of strangers
that tastes of resilience
feels closer to any religious experience
than my years surrounded
by fellow countrymen who clutch the Bible
as indemnity from their trespasses.