Jacob Shores-Argüello

Costa Rica I finally find the witch. She is branch- boned, old, with knowing fingers. She says nothing. Walks me to a tall tree, a gourd hanging from a long line of jute. She pulls out a phone, asks me to type a note to my family. I do it, but can’t see how it can be sent from somewhere so deep. She scolds me, says that only tourists think the world can be escaped. The jungle’s green is the wild mind of God. The witch puts the phone into the gourd. Hand-over-hand, she raises this cradle to the top of the holy canopy.

Costa Rica The bus arrives in the orchid heat, in the place where coffee grows like rubies in the valley’s black soil. We disembark, walk in twos so we don’t slip on the genesis mud. The woman next to me carries three cellphones as gifts for cousins and a bucket of chicken to share. How is it that I have come this far with nothing, that I am empty- handed in this country of blessings? A procession of rust-colored macaws glides above us. Their ashy shadows draw crosses onto all of our heads.