WRESTLING ELEPHANTS

By Jamie Brisick

In A Mud-Caked Village in Guerrero

In a mud-caked village in Guerrero, Mexico my heart went pitter-patter for this lovely woman. She spoke no English, I spoke little Spanish, but we both knew that four or five lifetimes ago we lived in the same town in the south of Spain, or was it Argentina? I was especially polite to her father. She spent a lot of time in the mirror before Sunday Mass. There was the soccer ball that rolled into her lap during a game with my cousins in the park, and there were the hundred swallows that batted their wings in my belly when she threw it back. We were never lovers, but we yearned for each other in a Garcia Marquez sort of way.

May 7, 2014