Don’t (redux)

The hibiscus were impartial but patricide was the topic of conversation, not the usual coacktail party banter. A dragonfly drained a pistil daiquiri, while a croo of white ibis pecked at some takeaway boxes, and Lagartija Ron watched silently in blitzkrieg formation from the tree line.

I was on a two week jag to the past—in the shape of Florida—in the key of Spanglish. My ancestral forelocks were trapped in a cowlick, all mortise and tenon-like, as if we were on an all-inclusive at a Bahamas resort — specifically Eleuthera — but full of temperate zone tchotchkes and such.

It was an altogether vertiginous and humid afternoon. The wet bulb temperature was nearly 95° F — deadly, you see — so the impartial hibiscus were decidedly on a manatee fissure / fig banyan, sorta tip — and I was, like, sure! Aha! I second that!

But I really had no conception of where I was or what I was going on about. See, that’s the thing about Florida . . .

Don’t.

It didn’t work out for Ponce de Leon. It definitely went sour for Hernando de Soto. And now … well … just …

Don’t.

What I’m Reading:

I’m going to make a poem out of nothing.
You and I will be the protagonists.
Our emptiness, our loneliness,
the deadly boredom, the daily defeats…

— Luis Alberto de Cuenca / “William of Aquitaine Returns”