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Guatemala
by Sally
Domingue
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AWAY FROM HERE. Inhaling deeply of spices and thing I cannot put
words to. As a freshman I went to Guatemala on a humanities trip. Scared and thrilled. Everything was different
and nothing was like here. OR it was like looking into a future where culture was reversed. Where McDonald's had
a rainforest ambushing its civilized neon yellow lights. It was beautiful. The mountains. Masses of rock jutting
unimaginably high and forever part of the horizon. A volcano, long dead and glazed with snow, looms across the
water. It mimics our universe on the ocean: expanding until it collapses and infinitely small again, an hourglass
flipped every five billion years. Stepping into the onyx Pacific liquid. Rings vibrate from my ankles. Somewhere
a star was dying with its own rings of heat. I absorbed the bluish glow of the sliced moon. No longer dying as
I had been, but feeling myself as small on this planet - still not content to be what I was, happy that my nurturer
was ancient.
On a balmy breeze it flies. A superfluous creature, undetectable in the wind. Wraps itself around the girl standing
like a mermaid given legs in the abyss of the Pacific. She inhales, desperate yet calm, this life. The creature
curls in her chest beneath her ruby heart. It radiates a deep crimson luminance against the creature's wings. Shimmering
to each other in the singing language. Exhale. It peers far into her dark eyes - they are part of the ocean, small
pools birthed to her. Shimmers away. Glances back. She hasn't detected its presence and stands with a fixed gaze
on the volcano. She felt it. Her heart growing warm and the flicker of starlight - brilliant for a second. A half-second
in time. Her pupils adjusted in a twitch to focus on the flutter of light.
The moon has hypnotized me through the slow breeze shifting the palm tree fronds. A wind, that's all. No being.
It harmony rung in her mind, as chilling as an old deja vu remembered. |
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Unless otherwise specified,
all material Copyright 1999, 2000 by the author
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