Buenos Aires

In Buenos Aires, the streets wrap their nights around
As you walk somewhere
Cobblestone paths punctuated with old lampposts and
A gnarled set of railroad tracks turning up dust in faded fluorescent light, to remind that this is an old city of industry, gasoline, smog. And deeper into the neighborhoods, further into the streets you find Palermo's boutiques, with whimsical designer goods encased behind glass storefronts, a young woman wearing a blue scarf tending the shop within, her secret laboratory.
I pass, running, getting lost, being found
in the night around me.

In Buenos Aires, they smile when they speak, even if it is just to say, "Here we digitalize music scores for the library". How simple it is to just inch up a smile while speaking, and what relief it blows into the air,
lighting the space between strangers.
I am charmed secretly by this easy joy.

In Buenos Aires, I traded unknown secrets with strangers, unbeknownst to them. As we boarded the Subte, as we traversed Avenida Corrientes, ebbing and flowing to the City's breathing, I gave and was given.
A smile, a wind, an identity
to push me to write. It was a fabric, a pattern, a dance. It was not the most beautiful, richest, poorest, most trendy, loudest, or saddest, but somehow it was all of these as I rounded street corners day and night, going to sites but really looking for people, lives, routines, all the while not noticing these things and all the while
remembering them all.

I woke up in Los Angeles and immediately missed Buenos Aires. There is nothing more specific, just a feeling of something torn apart, left behind,
Like a secret I didn't even know I had.