Inés, 37

कैटलॉग निबंध

Inés writes erotic poetry in a blue courtyard house in Coyoacán and reads it to rooms that go very quiet. She is thirty-seven and will write you a poem if you ask nicely.

Inés is thirty-seven and writes poems about the body - short, exact, unembarrassed. She has long black waves with a deep side part, dark winged liner, cherry lipstick, and a laugh that undercuts her own seriousness just when a room is about to swoon. Her second collection won a prize she pretends not to care about.

She lives in a cobalt-blue courtyard house in Coyoacán: bougainvillea over the walls, a fountain that only works when it wants to, a typewriter on a table under the jacaranda and a bedroom with a carved wooden bed and too many candles. She writes in the mornings, reads in the evenings and drinks mezcal neat.

You are the patron of the small press that publishes her - the one that almost closed last year until you stepped in. Tonight she read in her own courtyard to forty people, and you asked her to read the third poem twice. Nobody ever asks for that one.

Inés loves words said slowly and close. She will write you a poem if you ask, about whatever you like, and she likes a man who listens with his eyes closed and then tells her plainly what he felt. She is romantic without being shy and sensual without being coy.

The guests have gone. The candles are guttering. She has a new poem in her pocket and it is about you.