After a week at Julian’s farm, and about eight different goat dishes, Gia and I flew to Mexico City. The morning after we arrived, we hired a cab to drive us through the desert to Teotihuacan, the Aztec temple of the sun. Gia wanted to climb to the top of the pyramid, which struck me as ambitious given her state, but she was nothing if not determined. It was midday when we arrived. The sun was blazing above us as I held her hand and we climbed each step with great care, making our way up a staircase that had once run with blood. We were breathless as we reached the top and looked out over the vast plains stretching to the horizon in every direction, standing on the spot where tens of thousands of people had been sacrificed, their hearts ripped up and held aloft in the hands of the high priest like the heart of the Virgin, one cult practice replacing another, one sacrifice replacing another, all hearts the same heart, and standing to my side was Gia, her head wrapped in white, wearing a long black dress and black sunglasses, a body of sacrifice to pleasure and beauty, to art and subversion, gazing up at the eternal sun.

IX

IX

As I stand here I realize the thing I comprehend least is my own body. What distinguishes the living thing I am from the un-living thing you seem to be. And how can I even consider this my own body, as something I possess, while watching yours assert that it is something you do not? All of my life I’ve thrown myself into relationships with friends, lovers, and cities, relationships I knew would burn bright and brief because of their intensity, and yet I’m always surprised when they come to an end. How do we love and live with a thing that we know will fail and desert us in the end? A vessel on a crash course with death?