Monachil

We woke up late, of course. The blinds shut tightly, the room was dark as a warm tomb, I stretched my legs. The sky was a rippling velvet, brightest blue and blackest gray, mist and heat. We sat at the back of the bus.

The pueblo was sleepy silent, I looked into the river and saw a bright circus poster slumped against the rocks, water rushing over the elephants and tigers, over the big bold letters. It was a sad thing to see, but the mountains reached up all around us, and there was a bright blue café with a chalkboard menu, and we walked with brisk legs and the air felt clean.

My boots felt solid on the dirt pathways, we walked past neat little farms and beautiful persimmon trees, we came upon a shed of goats. There was a dog by the gate, he saw us and leaned against it—he looked like a sad tiger. When I came up to him he stood up and pawed at the gate with one hefty paw, he stood up on his back feet and shoved his nose through the bars. He was soft between the ears and his eyes were dark and sweet.

As we climbed the hills we were thankful for the chill. We came upon a square government building and a block of cement with three different sides, all strange and wonderful street art. We passed more persimmon trees and a man drove by on a motorcycle with a black lamb draped across his lap. It lifted its head to look at us as they passed. Up high in the hills were lonely crumbling buildings, they looked beautiful and serious.

We climbed cement slab steps, nervously crossed swaying suspension bridges and waddled under big overhanging stones along the river. The water looked clean, blue and cold. We found two big stones in a little cave of foliage and sat to eat sandwiches and mandarins and pastries and then the sky opened up, just a little, and sprinkled us with water, and we cleaned up quickly and scrambled back along with big overhanging stones, the belly of the mountain.

When we came back to the swaying bridge, it was raining on the rock climbers, it was raining on their black dog. When we came to the stone steps, we parted ways and wound around and up in an unexpected spurt of chilly exhilaration. We scrambled up a jagged path and reached a little plateau, we raised our arms and looked up into the gray sky and down at the glistening tree tops, we looked down at that fiery autumnal red, at green and green and green. From up top we could see two little figures huddled together beneath a tree. We whooped and waved, and they danced back up at us.

We made a circle of warm bodies and with stiff fingers lit a sturdy little spliff, warmed our lungs with the tang of tobacco and weed. I clambered down the hill with it perched between my lips, exhaled into the sky and felt my own skin with a definite lucidity as the little drips of water slid down my nose. 


The way back is always quicker. We were back on the sidewalk, we walked past the circus poster, dissolving in the wet, we stood at the bus stop with our hands in our pockets.