Mexico
walks barefoot through the centuries,
every footprint filled with marigolds,
radio static, and the scent of wet stone.
The dead carry umbrellas to protect themselves
from memories.
Between its pyramids and walls, they whisper
into old cassette players hidden among the roots.
A cactus grows a velvet mouth.
It sings in Nahuatl to the wind,
its tongue stitched from the braids of forgotten women.
The desert listens, barefoot and bruised.
A jaguar speaks to the moon,
telling you to remember the names
of every river you’ve crossed.
And when you wake up,
there’s a photograph on your pillow:
the horizon tilted
as if the earth itself
had taken a deep breath
and refused to exhale.
- A surrealist poem I wrote about my hometown.
