Swift evening spreads across CDMX.

The City rises from a brown twilight lake bottom upon a pyramid of skulls. Smells of charcoal, exhaust, excitement, and fear, for here, all energy burns hot as searing sidewalks cool, illuminated by the searing streetlights of the chaotic night.

Ciudad de México awaits for sirens.

Policia in action—chasing ghosts—mounted machine guns in truck beds. Nighttime patrols of great masked men splashing through potholes on mysterious missions for taquerias—restlessly earning a living wage for wives in full cry—I cover my ears.

Aquí familia es todo.

The golden-winged angel guards the way to the palace—uplifting the soul.

Bare bulbs above food stalls leave tracers on my eye, and the holler of the tamale, the steam whistle of the camote, and the “chit, chit—” of the lady of the night ring in my ears like a handbell, “la busura, la busura!”

In the market, fertility is gold. The fruits are the stuff of fable, and the scent of carbón is the mating call. The appetite for women is admirable, as tacos and senoritas are God and Queen.

Tres al pastor por favor. Todo.

Reggaeton and Mariachi compete for space in the smog-filled air. Motorbikes swerve in and out of the constant jam of traffic. Horns blare, and I cover my ears once again.

Sheltered in shadows in fishnets, they check their lipstick in hand mirrors. While that bolder stand out right on the curb, breasts bare, skirt hiked up to the pubis.

Chit, Chit—

The ladyboys in the Old City reveal their cleavage below their Adam’s apples. Beauty troubled by heavy chins, chins held high in pride, thirsty for the almighty peso, they swallow as I walk by.

Chit, Chit—

Haunting the City’s dreams, the siren is of a tense and hungry night.

The street: a haven for lovers and muggers and fright.

A fright so thick one must perpetually transcend the vibration with a knife, as the City’s hum is in the marrow—tension building until the bone must break.

Mortality had coiled when the SISMO alarm wailed the day the bone broke. Its long fingers searched the nerves, scratching the skull. We fled to the street as homes fell from grace: bribery, structural failure, corruption, and deviations rose in a plume of dust. The earth had awoken and shaken us off like fleas. And the City ceased to sing and grew internally sick, anxious, and neurotic, yet, Las Chilangos united, pulling thy neighbor out from under the rubble—La Grava.

By day four, death had filled the air—Los Muertos.

I haven’t slept in months, and my neck aches—mass trauma. City insomnia.

I heard the howling, the crying at night…the cry for life.

Chit, chit—

ii.

I awake to your voice. So tender, so sweet. With dreams in her eyes, eyes I do not see. Dreams in your chest, your belly, deep in your womb. My ears were full of love and fear in my heart as I threw off the blankets and made my way to the window again. The morning breeze carrying your melody, the same old folk song, a song I’ve ‘never’ heard.

Like the tiniest bird, elegant, ageless, I can not release my grip from the ledge. I lean further and further, looking upward above, though I see nothing but blue sky tainted by smog. Leaning further, my hands slip, and I’d fall to my death—so romantic, adrenaline pulsing through my veins. So heavenly, this angelic sound in this City of Hammers.

This City of noise—constant destruction and construction—this City that shakes and shivers, howling and cries.

Hernán Cortés hopped off his Iberian in Tenochtitlán over five hundred years ago, but still little has changed, but the volume and amplification, but time still fades.

EL GAASS, GAASSS, GAASSSS!

The brass handbell, “LA BASURA!” Time to sort through trash.

Camote and ear-piercing steam, pushing his cart through the city day and night. Megaphones on the myriad of old beat-up pickups lurking on side streets, catcalling old stoves and mattresses worn, popped springs, “¡SE COMPRAN COLCHONES, REFRIGERADORES. ESTUFAS, LAVADORAS, O COSAS DE FIERRO VIEJO QUE VENDAN!”

¡TAMALES, OAXAQUEÑOS, ROJOS, VERDES Y TAMBIEŃ DE DULCE!

The music plays on—Reggaeton beat.

The show—the scroll unrolls, even a blind man sees Ciudad de México rolling on, unraveling, before reuniting and braiding in and out of the subtle buzz and electric hum of bare burning bulbs. The vocho and combis lined up and down, on every route, every which way, this web, that maze, trumpets on every corner, honking, and honking, and carrying on, this way and that. An orchestra of madness, organized chaos—predictable unpredictability—where sleep is worth more than its weight in gold, as one listens in the lightest snore for the SISMO alarm—

Shake, rattle, and roll.

I have learned to consider tossing and turning to be restful, and regular, and finally fade into sweet dreams, dulces sueños, just before sunrise, as the quietest hour arrives just before the beast awakens and roars. Yet, I have awoken to your sweet melody for the past week now. A song never heard. The most gentle breeze of sound to ever have graced the bruised drums of my ears. Still, I fear that your voice, so tender, so soft, and elegant, may make its way to my pounding heart as I lean further and further out the window, hoping to fall—angelic melody catching me and lifting me to meet you, where I see your warm eyes, where your shiny braids fall to your thin flowered dress. Your lips, so soft, so complete, an angel forming the words of the same old folk song. A song never heard but for a week. Leaning out the window, I offer my ear as my hands grasp the ledge. As you hold me, as you are the most beautiful thing I have ‘never’ seen.

I awake to you again, rush to the window, and again lean out, oblivious to death, for you bring me life; you bring me heaven and hell and the peace of death in the City of Hammers. I do not notice the pounding in my chest anymore. I feel the soft skin of your cheek beneath the back of my fingers; all I smell is the syrupy scent of your long beautiful hair—dulce; all I sense is wonder, passion, innocence, and love. I am happy—

¡Muy féliz!

Surely, traditional, shy, and beautiful, preserved in time, preserved in amber—sweet jam.

I think to knock. Am I out of my mind?

What conversation do we have? What do we share?

My sheepish grin, eyes to your feet, this güero, this light-eyed stranger from the north. A stranger in too many ways. A stranger to custom, culture, community, a stranger to time, and tradition.

Now I sit wondering and wishing. I sit here by the window, empty and hollow, yearning for your voice in the silence, in the noise, in the chaotic orchestra of this City of Hammers.

“Maybe she is out for tortillas,” I think aloud, startled by my own horse voice.

The sweet scent of tortillas, surely sweet like the scent of your hair, dulce, filled the air in my stale room.

Again, I stand by the window; your tender, soft, and elegant voice returning to fill my void.

Oh, how I missed you so. I wonder who you are, Maria, Ana, Francisca, indeed something elegant and traditional.

A name to sing about in an old folk song.

I will not knock but hope to scent the sweetness from under your door.

Am I crazy?

I freeze as your door opens wide with the breeze, your beautiful voice wafting out in the hall, my heart thumping against my chest, my breath shallow, my palms wet as I continue casually on, as though I live upstairs, strolling, slow enough to take a quick look inside. I see you by the window’s ledge, tarnished by grey, looking for blue sky. Blinded by the sheen of cold metal—the wheelchair in which you sit. I turn and run back down the stairs to my room, shut my window, and hear only hammering through the walls—and know you never leave, not even for tortillas down the block.

I awake this morning in wet sheets; it is boiling hot. Yet, I will not open the window today. It is so stifling I can not breathe and have nothing to cook—I will leave the window open to freshen the room while I am away. And I notice a woman on the rooftop across the way hanging clothes to dry in a thin flowered dress, long braids sheen in the sunlight.

Oh, your voice fills my ears and sends chills down my spine—your song fading as I shut the door and make my way down the stairs.

Walking down the sidewalk with huevos, queso, and chorizo, I think of you, Maria, Ana, Francesca, and your voice, and it haunts me.

Oh, how can I be so cruel?

The flowers are bright yellow and remind me of you, so elegant, and I grab them from the stand.

“Cincuenta pesos!” says the man on the stool, paper in hand: Two shot dead on some block, sprawled out in the street, sleeping peacefully—oh, how we dream.

The scent was so sweet—dulce.

I pull out twenty-two pesos, five pesos short. I put the flowers back and continue along my way—the camote unleashing a hellish blast from the bowls of the steam whistle, and I cover my ears, and a bird flies away.

iii.

He touches the infant’s lip with one finger, and the woman smiles. He leans in front of her with an accordion slung over his shoulder and questions her about life. She says her husband deserted shortly after arriving in the City. Now she lives how she can and shares a squat with another trusted street beggar and his woman, whom she hasn’t seen in over a week and can’t remember her name.

Blushed, the infant begins to cry. The woman loosens the top of her indigenous garb as her smile fades. She nods “no,” freeing her swollen brown breast, which the infant blindly devours.

A car speeds by. Mariachi pours out the open windows into the searing mirage. At the end of the block, long shadows of comers and goers grow large and then small and loom alarmingly or flatten out into nothing.

It takes no great detective work to identify her or from where she came and her predicament, and I’ve photographed her many times, as I do now, without notice. The dirty-mouthed child and her mother on the street—a great-depression era portrait, one might say another modern-day Mexico City. I see them everywhere I go, hovering on the edges of one consciousness, in the periphery, hungry, covered in the grim of reality, the searing sun, hunger pangs, and the shattered streets.

I never assumed she was a prostitute, as her child’s presence didn’t fit, and she always looked up from her squat respectfully. She has a grim expression, but suddenly she winks and jerks her head back, but then smiles, exposing her decayed teeth as she asks for a peso to feed her and her forever-hungry child.

She is odd. But likable. Comforting in her persistent presence.

I am now sure any given night, she winks and gives the inconspicuous jerk of the head to the right man of thirst, and with her little child, despite the risk, leads him into the consequence of the night, for maybe he could answer her dreams—just maybe. But one will never know unless one tries. But she stops in the last bit of light and turns to him, pointing to her little girl, and gives the mouth-to-belly sign of hunger.

Today, I see her again. I see she is pregnant. She looks up at me this time with no smile, no prominent teeth within her grin as she extends her palm: The universal gesture of the beggar. I put the money in her hand, and away I go without taking her portrait.

She is one of the thousands of indigenous Mexican women trapped and reduced by this Capital City.

Back in my room, I drop my weight on the bed and look at the photographs I’ve tacked to the otherwise bare walls. I focus on the photo of the woman nursing her infant. It is one of the best I’ve taken—touching and strange—her face entirely solemn and deeply shadowed under the cheekbones. Her offered breast looks ponderous enough for stone, and the sickly infant, its eyes closed, appears to be swooning away from the black fruit of the nipple as though from an abundance it cannot bear.

Under this picture is a note I’ve pinned; it reads, “She is life.”

I think I read that in a book once.

I Ponder, What is my excessive concern, and why has this woman appeared to become its personification?

I realize she also personifies something more complicated: the mystery in women.

Is this my darkness, my lonely deprivation, or just the outcome of my devouring curiosity?

Still, maybe, in all honesty, it is nothing more than the fruit of voyeurism.

I don’t see compassion or idealism as automatically canceling when some subterranean stream can be identified beneath. Our current cartoon philosophy, opposites, and even two sides of the same coin cannot coexist. I prefer medieval wisdom, which says that lust thwarted can become love and that the barriers to the body can lift the spirit. Civilization is based on hypocrisy, whether we like it or not.

I think I also read that somewhere in a book.

I tend now to my dignity and mock neither my passion nor my compassion, but ask myself, what then must we do?

But I know the answer: We must give and give whatever we can, and I must remind myself how superior I am—if even in darkness.

As I provide life to live.

As she provides life to live.

To her, I am the periphery.

To her, I am the searing sun she glares into.

And I hurt her eyes so, as she holds out her hand.

As I remind myself how inferior I am—

For I would die in her huaraches.

There is nothing to do but attempt a siesta despite the utter lack of silence. I have no reading material and am not in the mood for my own thoughts, ridden with anxiety and dread. I have a radio to drown out the never-ending roar of jet planes, traffic, horns, bells, whistles, and hollers, and twenty-five million voices all murmuring at once in my head. The news broadcasting and musical jingle season my anxiousness to full flavor—and there is nothing to do but wait it out.

Naked on the narrow bed, I sweat and toss for the most prolonged hours of my life. The old dusty ceiling fan does little to cool the stifling cell, crudely functional, with peeling yellow walls, a cheap wooden cabinet, and one rickety wooden chair I'd never dare to sit upon. A single thin planed window with a yellow-stained curtain overlooked the laundry-draped rooftops of La Colonia de Santa Maria La Ribera.

On the bed beside me lies a sweat-stained pillow, and I think to hug it out, but instead, I punch it with frustration and sweep it off onto the floor. And the señorita, in the thin flowered dress, returns for her undergarments on the clothesline in the sun. I look at my watch for perhaps the hundredth time, and the comfort of her presence allows me to doze; just as a loud rumble shakes the earth, I jump to my feet, but soon enough hear the engine of the large truck pass on down the street. I glance out the window, but the señorita has left with the breeze. I curse and shrug off the thick layer of dread and sink back into the damp, and doze to the sound of the sirens in my head.

iv.

I wake in the dark, the room hotter than ever—suffocating.

The alarm grips me even in rare moments of silence.

I can not understand my dream, but it gives me a feeling of dismal isolation.

I squint at my luminous Swiss watch—

7:15 pm

I spring from the bed and throw open the curtain, and a panel of light from the glow of a street light pops on and splits the darkness in two. I dress quickly and hurry from my cell. The common corridor is empty and silent, as is the stairwell.

An old man in a starched white jacket materializes before me like a ghost, struggling with each step down the spiraling stairs. I stroll behind nervously, grinding my thumbnail into the fatty palm of my other hand as he fumbles for his keys, searching with cataract eyes to find the one for the entrance.

I brace patiently on the external while screaming internally.

He reaches with a shaky hand to slide the key into the lock but fails.

He fumbles more.

My heart races, yet I stand as still as stone, preserving his dignity.

It is now almost eight and dark by the time I make it out onto the street.

I have moved about shadier sections on foot in the night to watch life and live and flirt with death. Down the alley between two leaning buildings under tattered sails of awnings, I am carried away in the human river that I have dove into, which fills the market from one side to the other through the thread of bare light bulbs dangling from frayed electrical cords.

A heavily built prostitute with greasy, curly hair, and a short cotton dress, is born out of one of the eddies and drifts to my side. Smiling into my face like a dull schoolgirl—she murmurs her ritual question. However, I shake my head as I always do, no. And carry on.

“Chit, chit…” toward the back of my head, as I lose sight of her about the stream.

The chaos of the market: The cave-like entrance, the dimly lit faces, the muttered invitations and damnations, the cheap sunglasses, the frying food, blinding lights, square shoulders, black hair, racks of cheap shirts, and the combs; the shoddy array of household utensils, the dark wondering eyes, the jolts of fear, the static faces, the frozen, the dramatic, the constant sensation of fight or flight, the plunge into the savory crowd, flush in any direction from which I have come. I fry my mind with the smell of oil, shoulders side-by-side, teeth clenched, unable to run outright in the press of bodies; I skid forward over decaying vegetables and pools of pig blood.

My Nordic height gives me the advantage of a view ahead. A group of half-naked boys plays in an alley headway—inside deserted. Being but a crevasse, the illumination comes from shattered windows two or three stories up.

The place fills with a great stench of baby swine, which causes my heart to race—I am dizzy. The hammering of feet echoes off the walls.

My legs shake.

It is sudden.

It is always so sudden.

No alarm.

The panic is blocking my way.

My back is now to the seeping wall.

I want to laugh—

I need to cry.

My green eyes are fixed in fear.

I have no doubt to fight, without explanation, without hope, yet with anger.

I struggle against some sort of shame, embarrassment, and weakness.

The intensity of the utterly unknown threat fills my nose with fear and dries my mouth like cotton.

I can’t swallow.

Vertigo comes over me.

My hands begin to quiver.

What are you going to do, die?

Get stacked like a pig?

I struggle to catch my breath—my chest is heaving.

The sweat drips down my face.

The whites of my eyes catch the dull light, and I remember—

Desire, lust, fear, and anger are the sequence of the sensual man for all of society.

Now get mad, goddammit, get angry, and fight.

I grit my teeth until I feel I will shatter my jaw and say aloud, “You’re a fucking nut!” and push off the wall with clenched fists and wade back into the sea, and I swim.

Bathing in this crowd that jams the market between these old-century buildings, once prestigious homes of a forgotten time, with walls of stucco crumbling, exposing brick underbellies—dark-haired heads bobbing through the night under sun-eaten awnings, like the sails of a ghost ship.

I dunk and weave under bare electric bulbs, from side to side, searching for someone or something.

Behind a stall displaying cheap sunglasses and jewelry stands a tall woman in a little shop full of unglazed ceramics, wearing a tight short dress, heavy makeup, and red mittens on her hands despite the heat. She gives me a long stare and winks, her hair bleached to a reddish hue. She presses her swollen lips and bats her dense eyelashes. The figure was fully framed, with curves to die for. Their heels were sky-high, matching the red hue of her wet lips, almost disguising the plainness of her face and her long front teeth.

I’d like to say she has a respectful air, and I respect her and offer her a kind grin of gratitude. But her attempts to swoon fall short as she winks again and jerks her head toward the back of the store, a blue tarp on ticks, indicating the obvious, knitted fingers pressed together in prayer.

I carry on and wish her the best as I fade from sight behind a loose tarp that flaps in the charcoal-scented breeze.

A Second City lives behind this outer face, this facade, a City-within-a-City, a City hiding in plain sight, a City fed by the hungry. This Two-Faced City is living and flourishing amongst neglect and darkness. The bridge connecting these twin cities—built solidly upon begging, winking, smiling, head jerking—hungry children and thirsty men.

There is no shame in eyes wide open, but let’s walk on and let the shadows of the subconscious be just that.

So I move forward past the smell of soups fried in coconut oil, past the shadows and radio jingles, the laughter of invisible women, past faces fantastic and distinct, and mocking calls fading into the Chilango haze—

I bathe in this City.

I wash in this night.

A no man’s land of broken stony ground.

I come to the attention of scores of eyes: A permanent crowd of vagrants keeping watch over the forbidden gravel, and they can’t believe their own eyes to witness me going on foot. Others wander without purpose. It is a dismal scene, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, brown legs and arms dangling like charred branches, dreaming a dream that will dissolve into nothing.

With my jacket over my arm, I walk quickly.

The street lights buzzing, fading, popping, and cracking.

Reaching the potholed highway, humble food stalls of the poor begin to creep along its edge. Traffic consists primarily of bicycles and taxis from another era, many with cardboard for windows and paper strewn everywhere as they pass by abandoned mid-construction buildings.

The highway seems safe enough as long as I avoid any side streets. Street hold-ups are common even during the daylight, let alone at night, and the Policia often look on, and many of the crooks themselves are Policia or are dressed as Policia.

It is difficult to tell who is who.

There are fewer buildings toward a territory of deep darkness, to the outskirts, when a small man—shirtless, with greasy black hair in his eyes, and soiled white trousers—appears out of the night before me. Failing to acknowledge my presence, he quickly disappears back into the darkness.

A taxi slows beside me, “No gracias,” I say.

Ahead I see lights, the market for the poor.

I walk on the muddy ground beside the highway along the crumbling wall to my right, toward the flares in the night, burning with uncertainty.

The sea of tattered awnings matches the condition of the people. They live in this wasteland, this shanty settlement. Along this highway’s cold zone, they have spawned this warm, complex hive of stalls, selling each other questionable meats, lurid drinks, cheap cigarettes, and nicknacks they neither need nor can afford.

I move down the aisle as though at a carnival in an unconscious delight, like a child immersed in gimmick and grim, laughter and misery, carnal nakedness, threadbare nakedness, fear, and toys.

Like the smell of heat, the puzzling scent has intensified, possibly the cigarettes of the poor, smoke mingling with spiced meat being cooked over charcoal braziers.

Dark faces float everywhere, lit from behind by braziers and flames and bear electric bulbs.

I stop at a stall selling paperback books, an old man behind the table staring up at me. A plump man stands at the corner of the table in a polo shirt, hairy belly exposed around the waist, staring intently into a thick pink romance under a bare bulb. I stare back, neither of us saying a word—the pile of dated novels and a language barrier.

Refusing to show my uneasiness—I casually walk away.

A man in a cap turns skewers of meat next to one of the many doorless enclaves that have been constructed sporadically within this maze of delight, rooms so small they are little more than boxes one cannot stand upright—children’s playhouses, which give a voyeuristic glimpse into the gaunt private life of the half-naked children, dirty, lying limp and bored on sheets of cardboard, playing the game of poverty. Cramped next to them, next to a small table, a middle-aged woman sits on the ground in a battered gown, deep crevices on her face, heating water in a discarded tin can over the small flame of a candle, prominent cheekbones casting the same deep shadows as the surrounding sorrow. She looks up at me with deep-set eyes, black holes suspended in the void, vast darkness where this life has abandoned her bones, her soul sucked dry, her breaths numbered.

I break free with a gasp of air, yet I’m hit with a wave of uncertainty that makes my legs tremble.

Adventure mixed with the nagging consciousness of my isolation, reminding me of sudden hostility and bands of market thieves.

I struggle to deal with my usual way of absorbing whatever misery comes my way. Failing to find a phrase to dismiss the pain and awkwardness that accompanies intruding on another way of life, naively assuming that one would feel shame or embarrassment at my presence, but I hadn’t a clue.

Why was I here?

This static question, this simple expression, all that binds us, an answer neither of us is aware of.

I hurry down the aisle, bumping into shoulders, tripping over feet, eventually reaching the far end of the cavernous market and out into the open air, where rain begins to fall onto the threadbare ground, pattering the awnings behind me.

I throw myself into the back of a waiting cab without looking back—

“To the City,” in so many words.

The driver understands and slowly pulls onto the glistening highway off a high curb that scrapes the bottom of the frame. Soon we are wheeling under burnt-out street lights away from the glow of the lonely market, back toward the City that has pushed these people to the brink, to the fringes, to the fray.

Threadbare.

Sheets of heavy rain now pound the car’s hood, and visibility is sparse as I look out the windshield down the desolate highway; its potholes now pools—the rims of the tires slamming into them with a bang.

The driver and I make eye contact in the rearview mirror for a moment.

All I see in his eyes is a concern for the rain.

I now notice that there are common threads that can bind us through all of the fabrics of life. Let the rain wash away the gravel and grit that grinds between us—

La Grava.

Or too much to ask?

As his eyes dart away.