El Alto Fairytale

Where did you say
you wanted to capture the portrait?
In the backyard, when the sun sets?
Looking mournful?
...thick ochre dust coating our throats,
coughing in time with each step;
the rubbish-riddled pavements
flanked by funeral parlours
plying their trade with neon crosses...

You see, we were shut out of the house
(no reason given – lack of food, I suppose)
aged six and nine respectively.

only when the sky had changed its cloak

came a ceasefire to the shouting matches.

For thirty minutes we’d slump like puppets
by a moulting rubble-heap,
savouring stolen salteñas

before the cackles and grunts
of the karaoke bars and wrestling pits
struck up their raucous refrain,
and our nightly game of hide and seek began.

When we saw the low white building
at an alleyway’s close, our pulses slowed
and we remembered our smiles.
But - I’d prefer not to talk
about this much. Just –
a smart woman dressed in black
taking our names, locking them away

in her notebook...chocolate sandwich biscuits,
warm beds, scarlet sweets. That first night,
we didn’t know we’d been fooled
into thinking we’d found a home;
peddled like the pink and blue charms
in the ancient witches’ market.

I don’t know why our new life decayed –
maybe the mestizos chose other, worthier districts
for their money. The change was not sudden
you see; not like a fire, which is hell-like
for a night but at least with flames
you know where you stand (believe me).

No, it was more like the pummelling
of the wind’s fists on pillars
of desert stone, filing the tops and sides,
then weathering down the rock
till sandy layers give up,
give up their grip,
and fall away.

Months after the lady in black
left for the lower city; when the paint had peeled
and dropped to the floor
and the rats had claimed our beds for themselves,
we were forced back to the road,
to our old pilgrimage.

We survived, my sister and I - discovered
the mountain villages like a tribal language;
entered the Andes’ stony stomach.
We were accepted:
fed, watered, and put to work with the plough.

We slept by the door on skin-thin blankets.