Afterword

Chile, chocolate, coyote, guacamole, mezcal, peyote,

tomato, ocelot, tequila—the words survive months of siege,

240,000 dead in Tenochtitlan. The Place of Herons,

a place of whiteness, did not survive. Duende, a tiny face

in a calla lily, survived. A bowl decorated with scorpion

and pelican survived. Clay faces full of shadow. Sculptors

who understood light, how it addresses the afterlife,

expecting a great dark to fall.