The fields of Patastillal

When the weight of your body is more than you can bear
you remember every rock that made every bump on the road
and the faux-massage of a rickety ride over the wheels
manifests as new cricks and aches
and reminds you ungracefully of the aging
that awaits you.

Dehydrated, broken, you thumb through old photos
at the end of a long dusty day
that filled your lungs with carcinogens from concrete jungles
and wood smoke and pine needles and shade-grown coffee.

"The air is rich here en el campo," the driver said.
Your courteous inquiries unleashed the memories brimming
beneath his swollen paunch, that he doubtless had not
when they first got married.
Antonio tames the pain in his voice with a stoic delivery
of how she left
the other man
and the years that have passed since he held his children.
"You get tired in the city," he chews and spits his tobacco
into the green fields.

But he goes back every time.

The gleam in his eye
he claims is love for the country
you recognize better as a wilting melancholy.

Each photo of your past self clouds your convictions
that the fountain of youth is ever kind to women.
His nostalgia buries you like the avalanche
of stones that made the road uphill
what it is:
a back-breaking harbinger of the sweat on Antonio's brow
that will one day drip from your own.