Maribeth.

How do I tell you about this woman ---no, this girl--- whom you will not otherwise meet in these pages?

How do I paint a romantic obsession with the same riot of streaming hues which streaked my already dirtied windows, clueing you into the devastating, single-minded triteness of a broken heart, of a paper-cut mistaken for a deathblow?

In Mexico, taken by my parents on holiday, in a backyard of a house which had mango trees and bushes of dark, green mint and chamomile with tight, gold-smudged blossoms, cackling turkeys and rooting piglets, my grandmother told me stories she'd heard when she was little. She told me one about a lazy cartoon character who lived in a Jonathan Carrollish land named Jauja (pronounced How-huh). This kid had everything he could possibly want: burnt-milk candies, magical toys of unearthly articulation, the cuisine of distant worlds, playmates which ranged from joke-telling canines to erudite, bespectacled griffins. Whenever he wanted something, he would simply hold out his hand and ---presto!--- it was there.

A seriously cushy world.

This kidmeister had no serious problems to plague his life save for one: every time he yawned, he would be turned completely inside out, with a loud, audible pop.

The whole of the world became reversed, incomprehensible, and he couldn't get back into his familiar, human shape or world until something fortuitous, something magically random, would happen on the other side: the falling of a dove's feather in a pool of stars; the moon rubbing crumbled light from its sleepy eyes onto the head of a dreaming cat; two strangers hiccupping in the night at the same exact moment, punctuated by a rooster's crow. He had absolutely no control over his length of stay in this bizarre, alternate world, known as Ixpejo. Sometimes tears would bring him back, but not always.

Maribeth Ariana Fuentes was both my Jauja and Ixpejo.