Simpler in Lima

In Lima, we learned to flinch young. When soldiers passed, we turned our faces to the Pizza Parlor in Miraflores. We focused on Pepperoni and Mushrooms, avoiding eye-contact and spent ammunition.

When they took Luis, we were silent. No one told us to be. We just were. When he came back. He wasn't the same. We understood.

At School, Pedro sighed - graduation postponed, again. Another bomb threat.

When the city of 7 million went black, it wasn’t news. You sat still, like a prayer waiting for its god to forget.

When death threats came, you didn’t tell your friends. You sat and watched another movie, eyes fixed on the screen.

Alert, but pretending it was normal.

Ricardo made jokes. It was funny. There was no other way to see it.

but dark humor cut the insanity into smaller, more edible chunks.

When we saw the bank blow up, we turned to walk slowly, back towards San Isidro.

We were quiet. Avoiding sirens, Hiding from the army trucks.

Closer to home, we laughed. It was a fragile sound, full of anxious release.

Another night in Lima, another night of absurd living.

At twenty-one, in Alabama, the cop pulled me over. My voice cracked like dry maize. I handed him my passport. He laughed. I laughed. It wasn’t funny. Casually, I watched his partner's finger on the safety.

Old habits die hard.

The shrapnel still in my calf pulsated As he said 'Be safe now' and left me alone without asking for a bribe.

The gas station pump asked me a question I didn’t understand. I stared at it like a wounded man back in Lima waiting for the Senderistas to pass.

At the grocery store, 32 kinds of cereal. Where is the safety in choice?

In Peru, violence had a way of behaving. You suspected who carried the guns. You knew not to speak English on the wrong street. You knew what silence bought you.

In America, the rules are airless. The violence wears khakis and asks how your day’s going.

The disappearance happens in slow scrolls: in the job interview, in the look on her face when I said I’d never had a checking account.

I miss the clarity of Lima’s dusk. The barking of dogs before a bombing. The way danger felt honest.

Here, I don't know where the guns are. Or the gods.

No one warns you about the hidden threats in America.

One day you wake and realize no one is missing.

That’s how it starts. The war here is memory. And the time and space to forget, then remember.