Work Text:
I left my lungs in the south. I remember breathing out on the gorge, leaving my breath behind on the wet rocks of the forest. I nearly slipped on the moss, and that’s surely where I dropped my lungs in the water. From then on, I’ve been carried by the wind’s own breathing.
I will go looking for them. I was with a sister at the river’s edge — I only remember her eyes, brown like the ground after it rains, but I know I will recognize the heat of her body when I see her. I also know she will smile at me with all her teeth and tell me that the river took my lungs, the same river we drank from together, hand in hand, as we asked the mountain for permission to sleep on its ridges. I will keep looking downriver, driven by the wind.
There is nothing downriver — I will look in Patagonia's coldest glacier, further and further south. There, a woman on a fishing boat, with long gray braids, will tell me she saw a pair of lungs in the mouth of a fish. They could be mine, they were still breathing. She will give me something to eat from her catch, which gets smaller every year. A hot broth to endure the cold. I will sleep the night with her, and in the morning a gust of wind will blow me northwards.
The north of the south is the city, the metropolis. In a shantytown where the roofs are made of tin, a comrade will look at me with love in her eyes. The wrinkles are beginning to show on her skin, wrinkles of laughter and smiles, of sobs, of pain, of rage. Her son was killed by police; he was accused of carrying a weapon, but nobody ever found it. I will hug her when she tells me, voice broken in the dark of the night. Your lungs, she will say, I don’t have them, but I can offer you my hands. They can help you find what you need, she will tell me.
Her hands and the wind, that’s what I will use to cross the desert. The spring blooms in the valley, but the flowers are covered by waste, and under the heat of the sun I will walk and look over the landscape with something in my throat. The desert offers nothing more than dunes and the stars that shine in the night; I will not find my lungs there, I already know that. But I must cross the desert to arrive at the carnaval, and once there I will dance with the tinkus, breathless, to the rhythm of the mountains that break the horizon line. The tinkus will point the way with their dance: my lungs do not respect borders. They will point my new hands towards the north, towards the highlands, and from there I will know where to go.
I will climb the mountains on foot. I will have to borrow a tongue — in the highland towns, my own gets lost; it doesn’t understand what they speak there. A young woman with long, obsidian hair that shines under the sun will lend me hers, and there, with new hands a new tongue, I will be able to advance towards where the wind takes me. In the jungle, the young woman will say, where the earth itself breathes, that’s where your lungs could be. She will offer me a jar of chicha and a kiss on the cheek before I go.
They say there’s a river in the jungle — that’s the course I will have to follow, that’s where the wind will push me. In the river’s path, I will find an elderly woman marching back home. She will see my hands and my tongue and my lack of breath. With a wrinkled, wise and old hand over mine, she will take me with her. She will cut her braid with her machete, and she will place it on my head, and together we will march on as we feel the light tickling of insects at our feet. Far away, there is a looming threat, the machinery of death and the counterattack of the jungle’s people are preparing for a confrontation.
To the north, towards the sea, that’s where you must go, the old woman will tell me. The ocean breeze will call me with its salty taste and I will follow it, between the jungle and the mountains. Every once in a while, a guerrilla warrior’s bullet will reverberate on a tree. I will never see her face, but she will be there, looking after me and the world. I will not ask if she has seen my lungs, she has other things to worry about. With a wave towards the dark figure, with her face covered and no hesitation while leaning on a tree with her weapon in hand, I will continue onwards.
I will see them shining in the Caribbean waves. My lungs, at last. A determined girl with bronze skin and eyes of night will help me get them, floating between the waves and the tourism that throws its trash into the water. Without drowning amidst the beer cans, the girl will be able to pull my lungs from the sea, and with her small hands she will offer them to me. But with the fisherwoman’s heat, the comrade’s hands, the tinku’s guidance, the young woman’s tongue, the old woman’s braid and the protection of the guerrilla warrior, I will realize I no longer need the lungs. I am wind and breath, from the glaciers to the sea to the mountains to the jungle; I no longer need to breathe.
The girl will smile at me and under a mango tree, accompanied by the breeze, we will bury them.