I dream a miracle

The city stood majestic, with a brilliant tapestry of lights and skyscrapers, and a cosmopolitan metropolis reaching for the sky with its luxurious condominiums and elegant villas. Every home, from sprawling mansions to exclusive condos, reflected the luxury and status of its inhabitants, a silent testament to prosperity and success. But as the gaze moved away from the city’s glow, it revealed another face: on the outskirts, a gradual transition led to a slightly rural area, where modernity gave way to nature and history.

There, surrounding a sacred cenote, lay a protected area that the natives considered a symbolic and spiritual portal. The crystalline, mystical waters of the underground cavern were more than a natural attraction; they were the beating heart of a culture steeped in superstition, witchcraft, and Santería. It was said that these waters guided the souls of the newly deceased into the underworld, a passage into the unknown and the eternal, feeding the devotion and respect of the community. Between the thin line that separated the cosmopolitan city from the magical town, lay a haphazard land, an expanse of squatters where houses were built from anything one could find: bottles, planks, rocks, trash, tarps, and cardboard. It was where survival reinvented itself daily, and ingenuity was the only currency. Among all these makeshift dwellings, only one seemed halfway decent, half-built like a dream only partially realized: Yunuen’s house.

Yunuen, a young man of almost ethereal beauty, stood out amidst the misery of his surroundings. With eyes as bright as the sun, chocolate curls, and a slender, graceful figure, he walked barefoot on the dirt, wearing second-hand clothes that hung on his skin like borrowed memories as he waited for the person who, for the moment, was his partner, the hours slid by, slow and heavy.

The town's women avoided him, muttering "the Kex" under their breath as if his mere presence could bring bad luck. The girls threw rotten food at his feet, calling him a "homewrecker" with disdain. The men whistled and threw bottles at him, some half-filled with water, others with alcohol, and occasionally with urine. Yunuen, with an almost supernatural calm, collected what he could use, turning the rest into compost for his small vegetable fields.

A girl with unruly hair watched him silently from the other side of his fence. She wore a simple handmade dress, adorned with colorful and lively weavings, reflecting her people's tradition and hope. She approached with soft steps, barefoot on a path of green grass, and handed him a box filled with fresh groceries. Yunuen received it with trembling hands, and when their fingers brushed, he pulled his hand back abruptly, as if the contact were a spark that could ignite something forbidden. She, embarrassed, lowered her gaze, but the invisible bond between them vibrated in the air, a fragile thread of unspoken emotions and unfulfilled desires, framed by a world that watched them with judgment and distance.

"Thanks," he says as Yunuen hides his face behind the curly strands of his hair, wishing for his ears to be covered and not to let her see the reddish color that provokes the light fever on him.

"You're welcome," she replies with a shy voice, a whisper of a damsel that comes with obvious intentions.

Yunuen denies her the pleasure of seeing her in the eyes, he fears to be enchanted too. The young man is afraid to take his only friend to the abyss of his misfortune.

He prays each morning for his lovers and their safe return path. And for Zyanya's life, to request the Gods to keep her healthy and shining more than his own eyes that dragged so many people into his life. Appealing to the deity of the water cavern to never let her soul be stained with his luck until he gets off that cursed field.

Yunuen implores anyone who desires to hear his begging to keep blessing him with her presence and her warm presence after the fence.

He returns to his house while Zyanya stays at her place, looking at him disappear into his house built of concrete and bricks, with no windows or doors, just thin and translucent fabrics that glow with the sun's rays; wishing to be able to enter that place.

Zyanya gets closer to the wooden fence but her hand stops before she touches the rough stick. She takes back her hands and joins her fingers over her shy chest, running over her dress patterns several times as her lips mumble something. A few seconds later, she starts her walk back home, keeping her eyes on the cold structure until her figure disappears on the road.