"Blue Story" continued...

After workshopping a short piece I wrote last night and this morning about Mexico, I'm embarrassed to say that I was only vaguely aware of the Juarez murders--400 women kidnapped, raped, and killed. Indra and Pol wondered if this had been on my mind while I wrote. No, it wasn't. But tonight, after reading more about it, I realize that I now have more to say--much more.

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Blue Story

In Mexico men dress in jeans and dirty polo shirts. They wait on street corners clutching business cards in their cracked hands—hands held out to slow my progress from one curb to the other, “Ay, Señorita…Dentist? Do you need a dentist? Low prices…this way. Por favor.” I practice blindness, but am caught off guard by an inadvertent brush of an arm—I hesitate, blink to the street, then slip forward, back into the crowd.

It’s now been many months, but still, Mexico reminds me of dentists—and the color blue. Azure, the sky presses down on me. Morning sinks into the white of my winter skin in shifting patterns of coolness and warmth—sinking into bone and blood until even the dogs become blue—mangy and ragged, with sagging tits; they trot down alleyways with garbage in their mouths. The alleys, stinking of shit, stretch out like paths behind houses saddled side by side, stuck one to the other. But in my memory it is the dusty, thin-aired quality of light and a profusion of color that prevails. The blue dogs shine beneath a soft sun where everything is made brighter. I think to myself, to the dogs, to the men, and the women too, “I want you forever.” I feel Mexico low in my belly where blue turns to red and then back again. Children chant and women tease, their smooth necks exposed. “Ay, puta,” an old man yells from across the street. Not so innocent, not even the girls—except for one naive, but budding seductress—standing alone in a blue dress like the virgin robes of La Virgen de Guadalupe. Nuestra madre, saint, protectress of purity—standing in the dark, candle lit shadow of a doorway. But she’s not safe, not any of us—not even through marriage or faith—because in Mexico, sometimes, even the devil wears blue—swallowing women like water—leaving them covered in only blankets of stars.

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