Odaymar Cuesta

Finally it is our turn in the long hot-air balloon line in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The person in charge welcomes us: “We only have small balloons available and for the inconvenience we’ve have filled yours with lots of fruit or you can wait a few more minutes for a bigger balloon…”

We were so happy and excited to finally see the sky up close, that we didn’t let him finish his sentence before we jumped into our balloon, small and colorful, and packed into it feeling ourselves in the clouds without having left the ground. So many fruits along for the ride (mangos, bananas, star apples, ackees, mameyes, plums, melons, custard apples) all ripe, smelling so good. We took off relaxed and laughing, enjoying ourselves. Filling ourselves with every inch. We rose from the ground enthralled, looking at the sky from the basket floor, sheltered, snug, warm, all three of us. Fruits for bedding, fruits for pillows, fruits for sheets to cover us. We rolled together, we smeared and spread ourselves with fruit as we went up into the sky and toward the heavens. We touched their soles and their palms, our whole bodies magnetized. Hopelessly and willingly we caressed bodies– our own, each other’s, bodies unknown, over and over, varying speed and place. A shower of fruits flowed, sweet and pulpy, eggfruits whose shape is an offering bloomed from inside her, splashed with fruit, covered in fruit, birthing fruits through the skin, through openings, massaging one another with pleasure permeating, without touching, having without entering, transmitting impulses, waves, electricity. “Where are you trying to go?” you said. “Wait I am feeling it,” they answered, mamey tears, mango sweats running down our bodies paralyzed with pleasure, the wind blowing strong. We climb to the clouds, and with the altitude the scent and the sour of the tamarind intensifies, you squirm, you can’t stop sucking, you can’t stop and you want and it does you good, it does us good, sucked tamarind, sprouted eggfruit, with bananas that sustain us and we rise and fly through the clouds, we collect seeds, fruit seeds and we throw them, frenzied and delicate at the same time, down to the earth wherever trees grow. We pass above them, wrapped in soursop, soursop milkshake, ackees and cashew fruit lips, stretching your hands out of the basket that moves and invites us, picking coconuts, picking tender ripe coconuts and we bathe in coconut water, we drip ourselves in it, we quenched our thirst, we moisturize ourselves inside and out, we drink waterfalls of coconut water resting in their openings, sailing, making waves in our bodies.

Little by little we begin to descend softly and feeling the heat, we arrive to a hot place, warm and beautiful. To our delight, we are not alone. They approach and surround us, some big, some small, with many colors and bodies like we’ve never seen. We talk, we laugh, we are fascinated. They show us their many infinite tongues, different colors, textures, viscous densities and we agree, we accept, without hesitation. Consensually, we let them, pass their tongues over us, over our bodies. We welcome it, we receive, we acquiesce, we stretch toward them, their luminous, fluorescent color marking us, leaving toungetraces.