In the middle of the bloco, nobody asks for business cards.
Your badge expires
at the first drop of sweat.
The lawyer turns pirate,
arguing his case with cheap rum logic.
The doctor prescribes mermaid
and dives in without a chart.
The shy one, ah, the shy one…
becomes a portable constellation,
glitter scattered in the dark
like someone discovering they shine too.
And for a few hours
hierarchy dissolves
like sugar in a caipirinha.
But here’s the curious part:
the mask doesn’t conceal
it confesses.
Some drink
to uncork what’s long been bottled.
Some dance
like they’re renegotiating a contract with their own hips.
Some kiss
like they’re checking whether the heart still has a charge.
Carnaval is excess, yes.
But excess of what?
Desire locked in a drawer?
Courage that only shows up in costume?
Or an old urge
to disobey the mirror?
There’s a saint stepping down from the pedestal
to learn how to samba.
There’s a judge losing judgment
and blaming it on the band.
And the city, discreet accomplice,
pretends not to see
what it always knew.
Because in the middle of the bloco,
no one wants your full name
they just want to know
if you know the chorus.
Maybe it’s the party of the repressed,
the dress rehearsal for the forbidden,
the laboratory where desire
does its supervised internship.
Or maybe it’s simply this:
a technicolor shout
declaring, with questionable grammar,
“I exist too, doctor.”
In the middle of the bloco,
the question isn’t “Who are you?”
That’s for Wednesday.
The real question, a little more mischievous, is this:
how much of yourself
can you samba
before you ask permission?
F Y I:
Bloco: a roaming street band and the crowd that follows it.
Caipirinha: Brazil’s classic lime-and-cachaça cocktail.
Carnaval: the Brazilian season when the city turns into a stage.
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