Salt

I am the salt of Lake Texcoco. When the soil dries out, I appear like a white layer of snow, conspicuous at ground level. When I blend with the water of the artificial lakes that now populate this vast land, I become invisible, unnoticeable. I am a combination of sodium and chloride, yet I am never pure: I mix with the ground and its minerals, with the residues flying over from the city. When I am volatile, I even blend into the air. Sometimes they call me tequesquite, when I coalesce into gray crusts on the ground that become cracked and lift up like flakes. The Nahua peoples gave me that name as they set foot on this ground, for I give the earth the aspect of a surfacing stone, of dust magically rising in the shape of crystals.  [...]

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