Villarrica (3)

“Tupasy Ycua”

There is a pool of blood somewhere, a place you came from. You’ll find this pool petrified into stone, and it is red. There are thunderheads unfurling. Water runs over the bedrock, in creases down your hands. You are filled with something that is not willow bark or tobacco or bartered soil. The spring of the Virgin Mary is busy with elbows. You will sigh and call the raindrops the brother of birth because the world, you see, is ready for the storm.

Villarrica (5)

“Veronica”

In the villa at San Francisco Potrero, my brother and I sneak into the cooler for another bottle of Cidra, but after a few glasses it really doesn’t taste much like apples. We’d passed the maté with Abuelo and drank wine with dinner, but I want something more, so we hitch a ride into town and buy thirty Brahmas and a pack of squares for ten bucks.  The exchange rate is ridiculous, something like six thousand to one. We drink the beers and smoke the cigarettes and circle the square about a dozen times before we finally find her. She’s outside in the evening, done with her studies and laughing with friends. We buy strawberry ice cream from the ice cream shop and sit outside with students and seamstresses in the heat, a group of teenagers dressed in baggy jeans and band t-shirts touting rock acts from the eighties, though I seriously doubt any of them had ever heard a song by Costello.