Saturday afternoon from the other side of Nueva Suyapa

It’s finally a sunny afternoon and I find myself on a porch, experiencing the new responses to the change in weather from a different angle. It’s burning season here, meaning large amounts of foliage, leaves and garbage meet this chemical miracle we call fire to color the city-side, and lungs, with a fuming tint of gray. Mountains are still boundarying the city as they always have before, only a little wavery; visibility affected. On this one, human’s manufacturings interrupt creation’s disordered beauty in sounds and pieces. Trash hidden inside thistle bushes, cricket’s chirping blared over by radio triumphants and once lightly bushed hillsides now dirted and housed are some results. Mostly small, brilliantly colored butterflies flit past, riding the wind; which gently tosses oddly placed banana trees, longer types of grass and evenly littered bush branches. The more common black and white birds and less common miniature ones also go along for a glide, stopping to bask in aluminum reflected heat. Girls and their counterparts walk along this dust with buckets full of water and symmetrically arranged tortilla lined baskets. Some run, hands free, engaging play. Off in the distance, all of these things are happening just the same in greater volume. The sun begins to rest, turning a sky altering yellow-to-orange, tips forcing fuchsia, all pasteled by the ongoing types of smoke. The mountains now merge with clouds, appearing a mere shadow, both dually outlined by lite bright pink. The rowsuponrows of houses seem as they are just beginning to wake up, providing vigils of light pathways along the mountainside, valleys and in between that have come to define this city we call Tegucigalpa.