I Am Lost To The Process

I wake in the deep dark, light in my heart. I feel you, dear city, waiting for my touch. I descend from my bed, my feet lightly touching the chilly floor. I watch the blue flames heating the water for my coffee. It is so quiet I can hear the beat of my heart. I am yearning for you, city, yearning to be in you. Soon.

The winter air creeps into the cracks of curtained windows and slides against my bare skin. I pause, unclothed, in my room. I am a little round in places from imbibing freely of your delights but I feel that you encourage it, want it even. You desire me now, even if you don’t quite see me.

We started off with the most tepid of relations. Occasionally you would tantalize me with glimpses of your burgeoning desire and then revert to being another set of streets I navigated with indifference. Now I feel something deeper than desire. I need your need, so florid, so obscene. I am surrendering all I know, all I am for you, because I want to sink ever deeper. I am lost to the process.

I am out of my building in a flash, my footsteps sure in the dim alley. The short hunched owners of the taco puesto nearby are cooking a sheet of pork skin over an open flame. Another is chopping pungent onion into a fine dice. Every morning they lift their heads to look at me with curiosity. I smile and sweep by, bent on plunging into the yawning depths of the metro.

A man passes me with pounds of fresh ground on his back. Another puesto carefully curates mounds of glistening beef and potatoes. I descend. I actually enjoy the jostling of the overcrowded car. Touch—I can`t get enough of it. I push my way out, indifferent to the force of my exit. I enjoy this polite brutality because right now I am riding on the crest of its wave.

I think of you, city, thinking of me: at El Jarocho in Coyoacan amidst the madres sipping cappuccinos and gossiping at the corner. At the Roma cantina where the old men play dominos among hipsters and businessmen alike. In Xochimilco amidst the stinking canals and men stumbling in the streets crowded with tarp-covered puestos. In Antara in Polanco among the shi-shi sushi joints and sleek stores hawking leather, jewels, and a side of Mexico few can partake in.

And now I speak your language, I dance your salsa and cumbia late into the night, I know your kind. I leave my sarcasm and other verbal defences behind. Every day is a short story and I finally sleep not knowing my own heart or thoughts.

I finally see who else I can be in you, city. Or perhaps I am simply drunk on you, and this is my season for being someone else. For how long this reverie will last and what its effect will be I can't tell, but I dream long and deep none the less.