Colombia

Colombia knows how to speak. It knows how to read and write. It has to think for itself and define itself because the world refuses to accept it as anything more than a afterthought of drug violence. Medellín is the city of sex trafficking and dead white men. But there is a complexity there, just like in the punk counterattack on sex tourism. 

I didn’t have to find the word for Colombia. She already knew who she was. Everyone spoke it. Everyone thinks about on their commute to work, scrolling through Facebook college ads in the compact subway, looking out into the street during breaks, in the silence of the rain, in the disjoint voices of the evening:

Redemption.