andreaschrisdrewfreijaguyhalliejasonetc.

It's always grey in Lima and time slips away into those slits of vanishing sun and black nights.

Above the cliff face, down the coast, the cross of Baranco cuts the mist all the way to Miraflores and the Pacific slinks and laps, icily. It feels like a transient thing, sleepily nestled against that ocean waiting to find the heat. Waiting for the fog to lift and for summer to roll in from the water like a warm tongue. Waiting to leave and move up the coast where the sun burns endless.

It is beautiful, to be sure. The shiny concrete and well-dressed of Miraflores. All those bohemians and hipsters and sidewalk sellers in Baranco. Those buildings in Centro, wasted to the color of lime and bearing down the backs of highways, out of place. From that rooftop patio where the hours roll away, it is crisp and illuminated. Always now pushed into by a colourless sky and frozen by that Arctic wind bruising its way across the country.

People come from here or people go from here. There is no in between to speak of. Lima has words for few wanderers, but for those who hear it, it weaves a lush filigree. Sweet lines of moist air and passion pushed out on hot breath into pores. It permeates, for those that listen. Intoxicates.



I came to Lima. I stay in Lima.

Wrapped coolly in that lazy grey and cocooned in its quiet poetry. Nestled, as it were, like a transient waiting for the path to be illuminated. Waiting to leave while basking in the heat of distraction, created warmth. Feeling the Castellano float off lips, over hips into the break. Dancing under the black sky until the sun cuts briefly and the damp sends everyone to bed.

Those others that come and go, those beautiful soulmates, burrow into a lack I didn't know I had. In an exchange of all the carried things, we become each other. Become changed and well because of each other. Become ourselves in the reflection of a kindred. Paths wind like nerves, tendrils of dusty roadways through the body of a continent.

And in all directions, I bring them. The lack filled.

Here is the heartbreak of wandering: the dull ache of goodbye and the swell of being bettered by another.

Beautiful strangers/ Soulmates/ Satellites in the grey.

Linked to the experience of Lima and a life shortly shared.

Snugged into the neck of Lima, warm from the appertaining intoxication, distraction, I stay. A better person for those who passed through.

xo