Midnight espresso on a Mexico City roof

Three tracks into Fela on the rooftop speakers, hand wrapped around a thick espresso that tastes like dust and sugar. Leica on my knee, coat pocket warm with the tiny gold camera keychain I always tuck away; barefoot on the tiles, watching the city inhale neon and exhale rumor.

A man two roofs over welded a narrow frame for plants — the kind of hands that built something worth owning. He looked up, did that tiny double-take when the woman with the camera wasn't the sketch he'd made; that surprise is my favorite light. Prefer men who've been loved by complicated women; prefer to be looked at by someone who has been looking.