Sevillanas

Never mind the heat spell, querida,

she said when I arrived on the 10 o’clock bus.

There were still tangles in my hair and sweat

stream deltas at the nape of my neck when I

noticed the chemical reaction happening on

my skin, the way her river soil dampness was

blending with the travel odor on my wrists

and on my clavicle. How a city will smell

on you is not something you can predict.

I felt dizzy. She grasped both my hands

and we started walking, following the

train tracks. As she glanced around in her

distracted way, I noticed her cleavage

glistening under the street lamps. The

cathedral glowed. People here are

boisterous and suffused with self-

important warmth, intoxicating for a

girl coming from somewhere haunted,

a place that had seen her off with a

deafening hailstorm and a downpour that

had seeped into her corners. The beers and

the tinto de verano and that piña colada-like

concoction on a mostly empty stomach helped,

of course, and the sevillanas that spilled out of

wine glasses and doorways, brightly lit bars in

Barrio Santa Cruz. You don’t get this back home,

she said once, flashing me a triumphant smile.

Her laughter dove, resurfaced with the posture

of a suspension bridge, and she wore a silver

bracelet that clung to the delicate shape of her

wrist. Toward me she behaved as an indulgent

aunt would, she humored me when I wanted to

snack on roasted almonds, nap by Guadalquivir

all day, and the time I ate pork cheek and then

felt sure I had been drugged, although she did

reproach me the day I double-fisted ice cream

cones in a plaza somewhere in Alfalfa where

seven-year-olds on rollerskates were testing

out what it is to be unkind. Despite her good

breeding, she couldn’t help but judge other

women’s figures. Just imagine yourself in the

bata de cola, she’d say, as if that were the

cure for a lack of self-restraint. I found that I

could not slip away from that city of extroverts,

unnoticed. At night the big river is like a well,

and I knew that’s where all of her sadness lives,

meanwhile. Holding its breath for someone like

me. Everything about her was contagious. Yes,

even her sevillanas, which I dutifully tried to

resist, and those dark ripples in the water, which

followed me home. I’m always wondering where

the things I’ve known and lost go, but those nights

and afterward I just wondered where the things

I’ve never known and lost go, in a city like that,

where everyone called me querida, what can I

bring you, even her name rhymes with marvel, a

city unfit for girls with ghosts inhabiting their bones.