Carrion and moving on in Antigua

Greetings from Antigua Guatemala: city of colonial arches, cobblestone streets, and gut-wrenching income inequality.  These days, from May-October, the sky oscillates between bubblegum blue and charcoal, when the sky opens and showers the streets with torrential messages from above.


Every morning, regardless of what country I find myself in, I draw three tarot cards: one for the past, present and future.  Do they tell the truth?  Absolutely, as long as you interpret truth the way  I do.  Which is why I lost no appetite after after drawing the death card for my future with both decks of tarot cards I choose from.


In my AfroBrazilian cards, death is the orixa Egum, a red robed puppet walking zombily towards a bonfire.  And with the other deck, of Animal Tarot Cards, death is a vulture with a gnarled beak trampling on a bush of tasty carrion.

A future death in Antigua?  Gracias a dios.  If it's the death I'm hoping it is, my obsession with my ex-boyfriend B, it can't come soon enough. Still this morning, while trotting along the cobblestones during my run,  I was hammered over and over again with memories shared as a 25 year old swooning over that footbalista. The one who took a chicken bus to the Guatemalan airport to meet me after my flight back from Cancun.  The one who left me a rose and a sprig of basil on my work desk the first week we started dating.

Each time I have returned to Antigua since our break-up, I feel invisible claws dragging me under the current of memories.  Passing by the Neveria on 7a avenida by Jocotenango:  I remember that afternoon we ate chicken salad sandwiches from La Canche and siestaed on the grass that no Guatemalans even sit on. Yesterday, walking to the market to buy an umbrella, I saw "Cake Lady" who still, 7 years later, brings her round basket full of three different kinds of cake: fresa con crema, chocolate, and a dried up tres leches one that needs to be dipped in coffee or melted helado.

And next door: Pollo Campero, the home of the Pollo Campero "Plus" buffet.  Where long before my vegan days, B and I would go and order a combo meal 1 for 70Q.  Then we, meaning me, would unload the fixings from the local market from my woven bag: An avocado, a plastic baggy with a scoop of russian potato salad, a sliced tomato, blue tortillas, a 32 ounce bottle of Cerveza Gallo, and of course, a slice of cake lady cake.  Yum.

I haven't bought cake lady cake since 2010.  And despite having visited Antigua 7 times, completing numerous healing workshops, dating many lovely people including my current boo, I still haven't broken free of the Bryan clenching in my throat.  I need closure.  Come hither death!  Let me enjoy Antigua in peace!

The vulture:  Takes what is no longer needed and recycles it to create space for the new seeds to be birthed.
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Oh death my death: An ode to death

13 candles on the alter.  
She descends in a robe 
of green ashes towards 
the bonfire.  Candle music. 
Fire music.  A dozen vultures
feasting on a dozen vultures.  
What time is intermission? 
Dying is exhausting, 
every time.  If only 
hibiscus flowers could boil
themselves, blood could be
purely metaphorical, 
a long line of inner-tubes
to be punctured  
by green candles
on green alters, 
blackened soil, 
of roses and fingernails
growing long beyond 
our resting plots.  
Come find me again 
death, 
when you pity me again, 
death, pretty death, 
with your false eyelashes, 
your pepper spray, 
your wedding cakes
and pithy names.