Avenida Aviación

Lima, let go, I have to get up. I have to get up and get out of this bed and out of this room. I need to write about you. Let go of my arms. I need you to let go of my hands so that I can type.

I don't want to do this. I don't feel like I can do anything without you anymore. But I can't stay here in this room with you, not like this.

It started when I came back to you; me, always coming back, always looking backward for some way forward. I came back to you needy, nothing in my stomach, hungry for something. Without a sol in my pocket, a shy kid from the mountains, I came to you looking for a job, some money, a series of binding financial transactions and late night meals, a reason.

And you were here, same as always. The same tired, anxious city. Afraid of yourself, of what you might be if you could ever be anything besides Lima. You stay here, with your port of Callao, as if that were reason enough to wait out the centuries. You keep on despite the earthquakes, the noise, the misery of your grinding plates. You just wait around the bus stops, watching the combis go by, making eyes with your million tired secretaries after their 12 hours of celular phone calls, tipeos, denuncias, menús, el Trome, medio kilo de uva blanca. It makes me tired just to see you.

I can't blame you though. You never go anywhere and I keep coming back. We should have said goodbye years ago and we did. It's my fault for coming back to you- how can I blame you now for your white skies and chicken-fat stench and artless, graceless life? I can't- my heart is anticucho to your love. I get fat all day on your bread and instant coffee, your caldo de gallina and arroz chaufa. And then at night I lay myself down in your arms, your bed of old newspapers and pirated DVDs, all wrapped up in your exhaust. You part the breast from the bone and feed me in your bed. You say you love me. I give in because your days pound this dull ache into my chest so that nights I can't resist. You warm me with anis tea and you feed me your entrails and the potatoes fried in your fat. I give in and take your love.

I tell myself that I could leave. I remember Buenos Aires, how we lived and studied and read and walked and danced- how I cried when I left. I lie to myself and say that I could go back to Buenos Aires, and this time stay forever.

I think about all the cities I've never met. All those fine European cities- Paris, over there in the corner, drinking vermouth and smoking with sultry eyes. The thought of Paris fills my old heart with terror.

I will go back to my first love, to that place where you're never supposed to return because you were never supposed to leave, to New York. Luis García Montero and the sex and violence of the Brooklyn Bridge, some gooey balls of dough in Chinatown, Leonard Cohen. Remember that soft night and the snow in Chelsea as we walked back to Brooklyn, no money for the subway; the laps around Central Park and the taste of salty licorice everywhere in that apartment; all of it ending with an awkward lunch and a business handshake in Union Square, and me wondering if it really ended.

Eventually I will run out of places to go back to. My passport will be no good in Chicago; Montevideo will close its gates.

Tonight, Lima, I will stay here with you.