Selva Alegre

She dreams.

She stands at the back of the hardware store selling bags and bags of cement. Both hands are filled with wads of bills.  

A long line of men carry the bags to a convoy of trucks.  As they heft the cement onto their shoulders, she reads the  words on the green bag.  

SELVA ALEGRE--happy jungle.

She hears someone pounding, turns and sees a group of workers pouring the concrete foundation of a house. The ground trembles beneath her.  

The earth is alive!

The man wearing a hard hat oversees the construction. He is building a house. He is building a strip mall. He is building a road.  He is building a development.  He is building a dam.  He is running for president and favored to win. He has felled trees, burned crops and begun to bulldoze the land. Already they have asphalted roads from the highest mountain peaks to the deepest parts of the jungle.  Now he and his many workers lay a huge white cement foundation across the green golden fields.  

He has chosen the very field that holds the face of the land.  The concrete slab completely covers and blocks the field.  The cement seeps into the land’s eyes, her mouth, her nose, and ears.
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The girl wants to peel back the cement to let the field breathe.  It isn’t possible.

​In the dream she turns to curse the man and his workers. She warns them of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.  She tells them that the land will break through the concrete.  The land will open her mouth and swallow them whole.