Other people's despedidas

I have watched so many people, some quite good friends, leave and, honestly, each time it gets easier. Though the method of cutting cakes in Mexico will always fascinate me (the center part is cut into a circle, which shall remain untouched until all square shaped extremities are consumed), these cakes all start to taste the same and the speeches overlap in my mind. Sure, the locations change from the labs to offices to once mysterious meeting rooms behind doors usually closed. Those attending the event fluctuate too based on departments and differing friend circles. Tears are rare (at least publicly). Each person, speaking in Spanish or English or both, talks about work and how his or her time has helped foster professional and or personal growth. Bosses are always thanked.



It is not until that last moment, the moment when you realize you will more likely than not never again see this person, whoever he or she may have been to you during a period ranging from weeks to months to years, does the bit of panic set in. Should you give them a hug? A kiss on the cheek? Do you say the obligatory "see you" in denial of geography's injustice to your relationship? I always, always talk about how it is not goodbye. Jokingly, naturally.

Now, I go back to my office. I keep working. Nothing is really different because I am not leaving and my work reality is not so closely intertwined with my life. I have not changed with the other person's departure save one aspect: my realization of time passing. I have been here over two years? Is that really true? Time creeps away faster and faster in Mexico and it is at these despididas that I reflect on my own experiences, be them positive or negative, with a Styrofoam cup in hand and a half-eaten piece of cake dripping milk from its plastic fork puncture wound on my lap.

As I write this from my room, emptied into boxes, and overlook D.F.'s Centro from, what is now, my old flat, I am reminded that each despedida is also a bienvenido.

Stems

Wheat after week after wheat
following accents through rust that must be cleaned before departure
I scrape my shoes on concrete
before the stench of the garbage desert
and the offers of melted chocolates for diez pesos
and the tiptoeing around ambitious puddles striving to unite
and crash onto sidewalks
Wet shoes, I meet you plant to plant
rust dripping
and explain take all disease lingers
even after I leave the soil

Sinatra. Forget New York.

Dear Mexico City,

When I walk through your streets I feel like I will never have enough time with you. You are lovely and interesting and perfect in your imperfection. Your street vendors tempt chilangos with a plethora of tacos, tortas, juices, sliced fruits, chiclets, magazines, child leashes, flower balloons inside larger balloons, unheard of chocolates, lollies, healdos, elotes, hot dogs wrapped in bacon, flashlights, everything, everything.

I poke my head into your courtyards, dingy and dangled with flowers, hoping to elude the ex-military man in sweatpants and a barrette telling me that I must leave. Now.

When I moved into my apartment I could not stare out the window without the distinct desire to stop time. I would sleep with my curtains open (except on weekends, of course, when the sun assaulted my windows and turned my room into a tropical oven). Weekday wakings at 7 am allowed for the best viewings anyhoo. I would roll towards the window to the city's moods. The clouds or sunrises or smog or (acid) rain. Orange usually. Best when the sky is orange pink swirls saturating and spreading. At night I would look up from my desk, beavering away, to see fireworks exploding over the Zocalo. Unexpected treats with minimal movement.



Ambling about with a heavy film camera I run into parades or protests.

Your buildings, your erratic city planning make my eyes wide. Art deco stands next to dry wash. Fountains that belong in Europe intersect busy streets. Sidewalks turn into swimming pools when it rains. Nearly every building closes with a metal door, you know, the kind they have in storage-units and/or mob movies. A Mexican once asked me the name for these in English; I told him I did not think they had a special name because they do not normally line the streets, at least in the States. He shrugged.

Walking past tilted churches damaged by earthquakes and subsidence and time I cannot breath. Is it ridiculous that I cannot breath more often than not when I walk around these streets? It is not sadness. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Darling, dear Mexico City. You are never stale. You may have made me harder and less trusting and angry or frustrated sometimes. But I am never bored.

I have never felt more alive or more at home or more likely to spontaneously burst into a billion bits than with I am with you.

Te quiero mucho,

Mary