Cusco is an old woman, both in the books and in my bones. There are etches of snakes and moons and hogars in her ancient bricks, the wrinkles in her cheeks, the mud of antiquity. Her streets, to me, are not the jutted angles of newly sprouted hipbones and the spry flick of wrist, but more like mi abuela with rudded curves- the scent I know collects in the teardrop of her throat, how lines of skin give and gather. I've taken the flight of stairs up her rounded vertebrae, always I wear different shoes or pockets of breath but still time and again I've met her at height. We sit together her and I, her soft rounded belly and shoulders that slope. En el tarde she tells me celebration stories and how these eucalyptus trees stand for lifetimes. They shift their weight and open doors that creak; the wind pulls them closed again. The feet of this weathered woman Cusco shows signs of aging the way only moss and softened wood can. I can wander in her palm for hours and never feel it cup, follow the tap of her finger to the drumbeat that calls me home. Old and easy, mi abuelito. Tranquila, she whispers when she rubs my back. You know how long we've been here.

And yet... peek under her folded skirts and see how her shoes tap with youth? Also her eyes glint hungry. There is a new layer of skin that runs taught across her thighs. We share our days with newfound vigor, heads bent together slurping two straws from the same jugo mixto. Nothing ever tastes the same, and an evening unfolds with question mark curve of breast. Old woman? She is young and free these days; reinvented in rigor and venture. Mi amiga, she drums on my breastbone. Let's begin.

Knotted knucle roots crack to open supple skin. And I? Rip in.