On Mexico

Mexico is sticky, sugarsweet and sundrenched. Like mango in the park dripping down your chin, between your fingers and all the way down your sundress.It’s dresses always below the knee. It’s not being able to breathe on the train, 3-storeys underground. It’s falling in love, again and again and again and never remembering anyone’s names.

It’s being pressed up against a wooden railing after dancing sweaty circles with sand in your hair and under your feet and between your teeth. It is falling asleep most nights at 8pm, and waking up early for the sunrise. It’s hard. It’s really, really hard. It’s tortillas, chilaquiles, the quiet of a double ‘ll’ and speaking about books with people that crossed borders to see something new. It is being wrong about almost everything every single day, and michelados with tajine. It’s a love story, and a heartbreak. It’s never knowing what will happen next and loving it. Hating it.

Mexico is catching 3 busses and carrying extra shoes in a bag and shoulders that are always tensed. It’s kissing in public and wine and cheese for more than a plane ticket. Is it over yet? It’s feeling like something is always about to begin. Its Lincoln Park at 11pm and streets bursting into flowers and crying on the blue line. It’s eating lime with everything and never being able to afford apples at the store, and everything made from corn. It is everything, and nothing, and all the shades the sky turns on a May-afternoon before the rain.

I’m starting to say my goodbyes, and it feels like there is far too much here to fit into my bags and take home with me.