so she's six years old and her dad fills a two-chambered pot with water and puts her lips to the ancient square mouth and when she breathes into it, the pot whistles. seven years later she would find herself sitting at the top of a mayan ruin and staring at the great mounds of earth and trees. she had climbed hundreds of narrow-nimble stairs, and at the top her father tells her that under those mounds were more temples. he tells her that the whistling pot, that so many of the artifacts in their house (like the guatemalen masks on the wall, or the hollowed gourds, or the beadwork) had been stolen from dead people.

she would spend a good fifteen minutes considering whether or not she could make the five foot jump between the roofs of the mayan buildings. outside of this middle of nowhere excavation site was bustling cancun and the hotel district, where in their little apartment on the outskirts she wanted to walk around but couldn't, because white women shouldn't walk around by themselves here.

12/19/2007

Posted on 12/19/2007
Copyright © 2024 Eli Skipp