To You, Peru

To you, Peru.
To your darkened city,
your yucca root and
mango'd soul, to our
foreign feet tracing paths in your skin,
to being born again on rooftops --
to feeling
hope in a town that has lost all of it.
To the whir of motors and horns
that plague your streets and
the roar of the people chattering
in rolled r's and abandoned s's
To you, breathing life into
your Coca-Cola veins, to
the corners of pan and curry and
gasoline.

No one smokes here, do they?
I suppose you haven't fallen into Europe's
nicotine dream,
to cracked lungs and late nights with strangers,
as I have Peru.
I guess you know what it's like
to live a life unromanced by rain and tragedy —
your life just is,
and I am nearly not, I am
afflicted by words that hang in
my throat like the dead cedarwood
ceilings you showed me,
I am all insecurities, mistakes,
and mixed media,
While you just are,
a steady hum, a distant engine, a falling —
constantly falling sky.
Are you lonely, Peru?
Are you fluid, do you dance,
are you happy?
To you, Peru, is this.
To me, Peru, you are.