Signal to Noise

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Meche had grown to become a person of a certain composure. Things took place inside her head and heart, but she did not let people take a peek, preferring to show them only the smallest ripples of herself.

“Why shouldn’t music have power? My dad says it’s the most powerful thing in the world. Nietzsche says that without music, life would be a mistake.”

“Why can’t music be magic? Aren’t spells just words you repeat? And what are songs? Lyrics that play over and over again. The words are like a formula.”

They folded and kept their dreams in the same drawer, spun fantasies side by side, lived in the easy harmony of youth which did not know the need for tall walls and sturdy defenses.

Mexico City was sinking. A city slowly descending into the muck from where it had come. The Spaniards had drained its Venice-like canals and filled them with earth, creating shaky foundations for their churches. Centuries later, their descendants paid for their folly with constant inundations which threatened to turn the whole metropolis into the lake it had been when the Aztecs made their way there.

In Mexico City everything returns. The rains and the past and everything in between.

You don’t get to rewind your life like a tape and splice

it back together, pretending it never knotted and tore, when it did and you know it did.