It’s late afternoon in Mexico City, and the shadows of the Metropolitan Cathedral stretch long across the worn stones of the Zócalo, the country’s ceremonial heart, humming with chants, bootsteps, and street performers spinning fire for pesos.
Mateo lights a cigarette with a flick of silver and breathes deep, like it’s the only honest thing he’s inhaled all day. The smoke drifts lazy, curling into the open sky where once the great Templo Mayor stood—stone on stone, gods demanding blood and sky. He’s wiry, sharp-jawed, the kind of kid whose silence makes people glance twice. His hoodie is black and threadbare, sleeves pushed up, revealing a faded wrist tattoo: 13/09, the date his brother didn’t come home. He watches everything, says nothing.
There’s a boy selling chewing gum. A nun feeding pigeons in slow, practiced arcs. A couple taking selfies with a taco al pastor in one hand. Mariachi horns wail in the distance. The square is alive, swollen with motion. But Mateo stays still, a shadow smoking. He isn’t here for sightseeing. This plaza—this city—is tattooed into his bones. He’s from Iztapalapa, where the walls are covered in murals and warnings, where buses stutter up broken hills, and where his mother still sells tamales at dawn to feed what’s left of the family.
Mateo came downtown today for no clear reason. Maybe for the open air. Maybe to remember someone. Maybe to forget himself. He watches the flag rise, the massive Bandera de México billowing above everything—stone, sweat, sorrow, centuries. The green, white, and red ripple like the heat off the cement.
Another drag.
A man in a suit rushes past. Tourists pause to ask for directions. A street preacher raises his voice. Mateo leans back, lets the smoke hang on his lips. The Zócalo doesn’t speak. But it remembers. And so does he.