Chapalah

Charales wash up on the shore, eyeless and pale. Their burial regalia is an ocher foam dried to crust. We count the epiphytes that cling to Chapala’s power lines as we make our journey around the Lake. The dead are beyond number.

Last night was another gunfight. Grenades and machine guns cutting up the Carretera. Six dead and the police resign to cancel Independence Day. Still, the music would be heard for miles until sun-up.

In the morning, we slip out from under our blankets of opium, Indio, and agave. Fingering through trinkets in the outdoor market we wear our masks. Street food and fire from the balloon regatta rain down on the cobbles and we laugh. And we laugh.

A wire-hair stray looks up from the gutter as we pass and nips at his breath, before returning to his butcher’s bag of spoiled tongues.