Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
I walked against traffic
down Calle 60
into Plaza Grande.
Fresh little Yucatán angel bites
burned around my bare, sweat beading
ankles like a rosary, souvenirs of last night's
restaurant courtyard shadows
in the damp dusk.
Mérida's narrow one-way streets
and imposing interlinked facades
are ovens in the heat of day,
but the stone still rests lightly,
a remnant of the asteroid Chicxulub
that sent the saurians to their graves,
the low murmur of gravitational bruising
still lingering in the limestone.
Every calle a corridor
of pastel color and parked motos,
stray cats and electric wires
hanging overhead like exposed neurons.
Faded yellows, pinks, sea-green blues,
paint chipping, gates rusted.
Suddenly a wide wooden door swings open
revealing another world within:
a lush courtyard, arching palms,
bougainvillea exploding over
tiled fountain pools.
Mérida teaches suspicion of surfaces.
Grilled shrimp, diesel fuel,
ceiba flowers, and sewage
mingle in the same scorching air.
I stop before the cathedral.
Locals slip by me,
already knowing which walls
hide little Edens
or old family feuds,
which have gone to airbnb
or still belong to abuelas.
The cathedral presents itself as a fortress.
A church built by Maya hands
under Spanish colonial domination
from the bones of their own temple.
Before the conquistadors
claimed it for their Crown,
Mérida was T’Ho, a Mayan city.
Before the Virgin
there was the serpent.
The temple Yajam Cumu,
sanctuary of the cosmic serpent god
Bakluumchaan,
was dismantled to build the cathedral,
the oldest in the mainland Americas.
I followed a few Méridans
into the cathedral
just as mass began,
by chance, or by Christ.
I stood in the pews.
I prayed for peace.
Sweat soaked shirt
and professor head full
of colonial guilt and serpent gods,
a barely understood Spanish liturgy in my ears,
a war weary world in my heart,
I rehearsed the Lion Pope’s remarks
against the Pentagon’s unholy bloodlust.
Mary made her way into my mind.
She dropped into my heart.
I felt the limestone weeping.
I walked against traffic
down Calle 60
into Plaza Grande.
Fresh little Yucatán angel bites
burned around my bare, sweat beading
ankles like a rosary, souvenirs of last night's
restaurant courtyard shadows
in the damp dusk.
Mérida's narrow one-way streets
and imposing interlinked facades
are ovens in the heat of day,
but the stone still rests lightly,
a remnant of the asteroid Chicxulub
that sent the saurians to their graves,
the low murmur of gravitational bruising
still lingering in the limestone.
Every calle a corridor
of pastel color and parked motos,
stray cats and electric wires
hanging overhead like exposed neurons.
Faded yellows, pinks, sea-green blues,
paint chipping, gates rusted.
Suddenly a wide wooden door swings open
revealing another world within:
a lush courtyard, arching palms,
bougainvillea exploding over
tiled fountain pools.
Mérida teaches suspicion of surfaces.
Grilled shrimp, diesel fuel,
ceiba flowers, and sewage
mingle in the same scorching air.
I stop before the cathedral.
Locals slip by me,
already knowing which walls
hide little Edens
or old family feuds,
which have gone to airbnb
or still belong to abuelas.
The cathedral presents itself as a fortress.
A church built by Maya hands
under Spanish colonial domination
from the bones of their own temple.
Before the conquistadors
claimed it for their Crown,
Mérida was T’Ho, a Mayan city.
Before the Virgin
there was the serpent.
The temple Yajam Cumu,
sanctuary of the cosmic serpent god
Bakluumchaan,
was dismantled to build the cathedral,
the oldest in the mainland Americas.
I followed a few Méridans
into the cathedral
just as mass began,
by chance, or by Christ.
I stood in the pews.
I prayed for peace.
Sweat soaked shirt
and professor head full
of colonial guilt and serpent gods,
a barely understood Spanish liturgy in my ears,
a war weary world in my heart,
I rehearsed the Lion Pope’s remarks
against the Pentagon’s unholy bloodlust.
Mary made her way into my mind.
She dropped into my heart.
I felt the limestone weeping.
