I was in love before the airplane landed.

In a view from above, strong mountains stretched upward toward the sky and let their shoulders roll back down to their sides.

Thick mist seeped between the high altitude muscles of the Earth.

These streets are rich with life. Entire lines of generations occupy the same space of sidewalk concrete at any given moment. Children chase a torn and weathered grey ball, as it bounces between the shadows of cocina stands. A few feet away, their parents pinch tortillas off a flat, black-stone comal; with a touch that makes it seem like you could see generations of practice seep from their fingertips.

And the flowers. Las Calles de Flores.

I will forever know this city, Ciudad de Mexico, the city of flowers. 

Vibrant colors peak out of urban brush, exposing themselves to the corner eye-ed passersby. The corner of your eye may catch a sliver of beauty, but only when the sun chooses to cast a ray upon the lost and forgotten petals.

Every few steps, - between each hand-laid stone, fallen leaves and a few pieces of cluttered trash - a strayed bright-purple petal rests.

A reminder that beauty, like the best kept secret of life, resides in the details.

The essence of this city seems to be an energy in and of itself. It engulfs your mind and body, saturates you in its being, and leaves your soul to bask in that same very presence.

The smell of fried tortillas waft over the warm afternoon grey concrete, mixing immediately with cool distant mountain air and swirls away as a white and pink taxi might pass and lift and toss it all upward.

And as dusk turns to dark, the barking of faraway dogs engulf the night, accompanied by the echoes of a distant conversation in a foreign tongue. But foreign only to me.

This is my Ciudad de Mexico.

- Fuente de la Cibles. CDMX, Mexico. (December, 2017.)