Drained....

Midnight in the kitchen.

The 99 cent bubbles
swirled,
twirled,
cascaded one
right after another down the drain,
each one another hopeful contestent for the Miss America Pageant...
savoring her moment of fame,
bottom lip quivering,
then disappearing forever...

Tiny little Hungry Man Dinner carrots
bobbed,
drowning,
but pretending for a moment to be orange buoys in a silver sea.

I turned the water on harder.
Hot and Cold.
Everything at once.

I splayed my fingertips under the spigot, water splattering, spraying, splashing everywhere.

I cried.

And then I saw them.


The butterfly wings.....

"blessings, healing prayers.. may the next fall be in love ~s."

I remember vividly...
the night I believed...

Rounding the lake...
the fluorescent lights swarming with blind mosquitos
and the Ghosts...
fog bouncing off the bows of lonely fishing boats...
dancing on the water,


And the Martini Moon...
there...
Above me...
The perfect cusp of glass raised to the sky,
Clinking! with the Stars...

And so it was,
that on that night...
under the tipping brim of an accidental moon...

I fell again...

Head over heels,
face first
into an even more
Accidental Love...

It's been a long time
since
I've laughed that hard.

Felt that hard.

Fell that hard.

Tonight,
the words tumbled from a keyboard,
splattered into my in~box...
from a friend...

are the same fiery color as that long ago Moon...

Now....

It's 93 degrees on my porch and one by one, I shear off the legs from a stack of hand me down levis... These are for Skinny, this pair for Kimbies, a ratty tatty pair for myself. I reach down and wind my hair up into a knot, thread a bic pen threw it to keep it off my neck. I'm melting. And I smile. The broken AC is paying for how may nights at the beach?

I lug a giant tupperware box into the kitchen and start tossing necessary evils into it....salt, pepper, a cork screw, the camera, sidewalk chalk, a flashlight, paper fortune tellers, packs of no name cigarettes. We go without eating at home, we won't need much food at the beach....And I smile.

I wander through the house with a Winn Dixie bag and a peace backpack chocking random things in at will....the last bikini's I'll ever wear, magic markers and paper, little Love postcards for playing Pixies. I wonder for the last time where I left my little suitcases...what rendevous I came home from bagless...and what priceless pair of old jeans were lost in the leaving. And I smile at my makeshift luggage.

Less than 48 hours....

And we'll all be home...