Ghost of Wanting

Do you know those moments, the many, when you begin with a destination but cannot stop yourself from walking...when your feet know what your mind (or is it your heart?) really wants to know, needs to know: how to belong.

I cannot belong here the way I belonged in Argentina, with my light brown hair and newly learned buenos. I cannot belong on these blackened brick strees, between the moments, softer somehow than the weeks that have passed.

Nestled between the Viejo Gringo bar and the grounds of the port, single, serene, sadly perfect roses split open periwinkle bushes and mark the end of summer. Boys on bicycles, borrowed or bought, slip by the few cars marking the streets. The volcano should be the perfect backdrop on which to write prose, yet somehow, it is when it is blocked from my view that this city as a certainity, as someone elses only home, breathes bright.

Like at home, little girls in night blue uniform flood the sidewalks. They carry Winnie the Pooh shoulder bags, sometimes pulling bikes behind, like forgotten pets that children acquire and relinquish to their parents in the slowest of time. They hold tight to their bikes, wet with rain or sticky handlebars rubbed raw with fright. This is most definitely a tourist town. It is a place for overnighters to sleep and suck on succulent parillas, men with mountain gear to conquer the truest of all mountains. A volcano dressed in frozen beds, which spits back up with a fire even dragons could fear. All mountains are alive, of course, can shake and shatter, shadow in shock. But this volcano, I know, even from such a distance, is alive in its core, the deadliest of earthly hearts.

I want somehwhere inside of me, one of those unknown places, to scream, cry out in recognition that I am in Chile. But this is much more of a whispering place. Pucon could mark your heart with its wooden crosswalks, tree trunk slivers replanted in the ground. It could draw you in with early sunlight, flat-bellied plazas, an unfilled promise of storm.

If I compared cities to lovers, I would think of Buenos Aires as the most passionate of men: with dark sides, deep sides, both beautiful and disappointing, desirable without cause. San Junin would be a life partner, a soft shoulder of the earth, unmistakable, sure and never shocking. Bariloche, broad and boundless, would fall somewhere in between...its promise of comfort broken by its hardly harsh shell, too beautiful almost. And here, Pucon, would be a boy, a first kiss on the cheek, wet and warm with only a ghost of wanting.