Top cafes to visit in Hamburg
“There is such a lack of love that everyone wants them, young and old,” the vendor told me, agreeing to let me record his answers only if I didn’t share his name, before recounting the steps I needed to take for the hummingbird charm to work:
Write the name of the person you want to love you on a piece of paper.
Put it in a red cloth bag with the hummingbird.
Bathe the hummingbird in the perfume or scent of the person you want to love you on the first day of each month.
Repeat with a new hummingbird for each person you want to fall in love with you.
It had not crossed my mind that anyone would buy more than one hummingbird. But, as a vendor named Sansón explained, “Men want many lovers.” Both Diego and Frida had many lovers, I thought.
The vendors, excited by my line of questioning, seem to think I will be interested in the idea of trapping many lovers with many hummingbirds. That, in fact, is my idea of hell. It reminds me of past boyfriends, who, upon realizing the scope and frequency of my work travel, voiced fears that I had a boyfriend in every city I worked in. It is all I can do to make one person happy and understand them down to the story of every scar. Even then, it will never be the focus of all my energy.