Pinnochio and other tell~tale stories

I was fat. A dumpling with cold black hair and an indian nose. I was a girl. Samalama Singleton. And my Father adored me.

He nub~nubbined my head, and pinched my nose, threw me in the air and caught me football style, just before I kissed the ground.

At four, my hair was blonde and he had squeezed my nose so many times, it had almost disappeared....

At ten, I ran face first into a concrete wall, sprinting out from under a Christmas tree....and set that nose straight again....broad and bumped...

And then I was 32. Exhausted. Sacked out on an empty living room floor. Two toddler loves waddling in circles around my head, little feet knotting my hair up in piles of angel speghetti on the Berber carpet. I closed my eyes. "Here we go round the merry go round, the merry go round, the merry go round".......

"Mama!" he said. A three year old's world breaking the rhyme. I opened my eyes just in time to see the bottom of his size four pretend Nike's leap in the air. I closed them right before all 38 pounds of Boy jumped in the air and landed on my face.

Broader and bumped again.

My nose grew and grew and grew.....

When my soldier left for war, I bit my bottom lip . I couldn't let him see me cry. Not out the airplane window. I waved and smiled. Turned. Ran.

I kissed the door head on. Knocked myself out silly.

Six months later, the black eyes faded....and the bump was all but gone. I had the most perfectly straight broken nose anyone had ever seen.

When I tell the story, sometimes people think I'm fibbing.....
But I'm not....
It's broken, always has been.

Only now I can crinkle it.
Wrinkle it.
Screw it up in a magical "I dream of Jeannie" spell....

If you don't believe me, ask Skinny....

Spit.....

She stood on the patio. White patent leather sandals and cheese curl toes to the very edge of the concrete. From the kitchen I watched her blow and blow and blow, a giant "Achooooooo!", white eyelet dress billowing in the wind. "Achooo! Achoooo! Achooo!" I whispered "God bless you" but she didn't hear me, she was too busy spittin' the devil out....

Our Mama made us do that. When I fibbed that the neighbor's dog bit me in the shin, and really, it was our Princess, aggravated by being aggravated, but I couldn't risk tellin' the truth.....When I stole the Ford Fairlane, joyriding for three blocks before we finally hit traffic and bailed.....When we sold toilet paper flowers to the neighbors because we were hungry, and we weren't, but we were inventive....Our Mama made us spit the devil out......

And so tonight, I did that. Hammered up "Do not trespass" signs on the squeaky screen door and the picket fence, the psychedelic pass through to the laundrey room. It's been hell week. And we're goin' to the beach. Fate and everything ugly has raised it's rheumy arm to trip us up, to stop us in our tracks, to rock our peace. And I almost fell for it. Until I remembered to spit the devil out.....

Peace~love my friends,

If we Just make it through the night.....

Swimmin' up hill.....

I fall in face first. Imagine the blue Kool~aid waves crashing on the blow up shoreline. Slip into my mermaid skin and day dream. Five more days. My hair billows out on the surface, a thousand golden sea snakes swimming in a halo.... I open my eyes wide, wider, and wait. My contacts float off, tiny cavier eggs finally free. I smile for them. Five more days. And then no more counting....

I float in a circle, upside down and backwards, the current finally catching up to me, and then turn around and plow into it! This is how it feels when you take off from the seawall running, running, running and the ocean finally laps you up, whisks you away, slathering you with kisses. I can't wait. To be free......



To sit perched on the edge of the earth, a sandpiper, digging to China....
To dance under the mist machine and the neon light of the moon, 17 again, but wiser....
To hear the sea monsters rumbling, grumbling, tumbling in the night and watch them wallow backwards, foamy tails between their legs, when the Sun comes out ....
To slurp beer can oysters
and spurt salt water to the sky....
To build Peace Castles and scribble sand graffiti with my toes....
To sing in the choir, the next rock~n~roll band, the outside shower....
To paint henna tattoos on the legs of strangers
and the backs of friends....
To play driftwood, floating until I wash up on the shore...
To feel the love.....

I climb up the rickety plastic ladder and laugh. Peace is comin'..... Five more days, baby!

You can't make me.....

We caravaned. Met up in the Valet parking lot, squishing in between the "reserved-for VIPs"....and flip flopped up the deck to The Crab House. Oh, Man, what a beautiful day for Peace Out, coconut shrimp, french dip, and ice cold beer in a bucket. Me and three of my new best friends. I know, I know, I know, you've heard it before.....

But there we were. Instant friends. Old friends. With very short pasts. And a lotta catchin' up to do. 99 beers on the wall later, we had laughed ourselves silly, solved world hunger and been on a peace march. We had confessed, professed, dared, bribed, danced,harmonized throughHello Dolly in our best Joe Cocker voices, and scooched in closer for the punch line...

"But what if"?

"What if you won, fell into, stumbled on a gazillion dollars?"

Skipping the lengthy four-fold conversation we had about charity, clarity, responsibility and all that hoo~hah ....what it all boiled down to was this...

"But isn't it all relative? Wouldn't a blue lagoon with cascading fountains and towering palms be the same to you as a millionaire as your little vinyl pool was to you last summer?"

"Ummmm. No."

I chewed on a piece of celery. Dipped it and swirled it in bleu cheese. Chewed again.

Behind their Foster Grants I could sense their eyes rollin'......

"Lemme tell you about my little blue pool......"














When we caravaned out of the parking lot,
sunkissed and dreamy,
beerbattered and fed,
there were four make-believe millionaires dreaming about blow up pools.....

and smiling......

Counting....

I opened my back door on Sunday and could feel it. Smell it. Almost hear it over the weed-eater next door and the sirens. The beach.

We're counting days. Week-ends. Pennies. Nightmares. And then....

We're going!

Seven days and seven nights blurred together, smudged together, tethered together.....measured only by sunrises and sunsets.

And I ache for the peace.

The constant humming of the tilted window unit shuddering, puffing artic asthmatic breaths. Dripping onto the sidewalk, rusty little puddles I can splash my feet in....one good rinse before I plow into bed at midnight or morning.

The crisp white sheets, sandpapered with coquina and periwinkles, and cozy~comfy, sprayed with sea salt....littered with wet swim suits and towels....and beer bottle rings.

The three o'clock huddle, the housekeepers hunkered down, hiding behind my door, clinking beers and sneaking in ice.

The first sunrise. Kimbies in her long nightie, waiting at the seawall.... The second sunrise, Kimbies in her long nightie and five of our new best friends waiting at the seawall....

The Brotherhoods of Death. Another year older. Wiser. And still aching for their friend, their brother, embracing us on the seawall. Dipping, diving, dancing....Remembering...

The starfish with three legs. Still moving. A ballerina with only one shoe. "It aint over til the fat lady sings" we tell her, and whisk her back to sea....

Pots and pans and dishpan drains filled with shells. Treasures for the keeping.

Feral cats strutting in the moonshine, plucking crablegs from the garbage and bellowing 'Hallelujah"....

The sound of Skinny's car crunching gravel in the make-shift parking lot. 400 miles and 3500 smart cars dollars later.....

The yellow butterfly of San Marina.....

The Dunes

The dunes. Giant sugar covered bellies that we wallowed over like tiny pups with our eyes closed. From the time we could toddle, we were rolling in them, crawling up their shifting sides, sliding down their salty shins. From our house to the roaring ocean, the only fence standing was the dunes. The sun would rise and spray paint their peaks the color of mirrors. And so, we would climb them blindfolded. Chubby little hands folded over squinting eyes. And then swoosh….down the other side to the Gulf. The giant body of endless water that called our names out loud.

We played pirates there. Built Geronimo’s fort out of cardboard boxes and terry cloth towels. Pretended we were movie star cast-aways . We dug for buried treasures and found plenty of them….rusty beer cans, abandoned crab nets, Tiparillos. Mottled oyster shells were sudden jewelry boxes, and we filled them to the brim with colored periwinkles, fishing hooks, and adolescent shark teeth. Summer’s in my memories are measured by how we climbed the dunes. Eventually the cardboard walls of our forts were transformed into cardboard surfboards. We would drag the flattened A & P boxes up one side of the sandy mountain, and go flying, bottoms up, face first, clinging to the makeshift sea sleds down the other. We hauled the entire length of the clothesline up and over the Mother of all dunes, and played Man-of-war-tug-of-war. Which team would be pulled up the dune, heels digging in the scorching sand? Fingers sliced with instant paper cuts from the nylon cord? And which team, would be the winners, sent flying fannies backward by their victory ? We would all eat dirt eventually. Crashing headfirst into the salty earth.

And then there was the jeep. We were not allowed this carnival ride. Not by Mama , anyway. We stole it. Not the jeep, but the memory. Our Daddy and Mr. Bruce, daddy-sitting on a Friday night, piled us in the back, like sardines ourselves, and we were suddenly bobbing, leaping, lurching up the white hillside. The headlights flickered up and down, sideways, making fun of the stars as we struggled to climb the daring dune. At the top, with the tires spinning frantically in place, I was sure we would just topple off the earth. Instead we dove into the black night and landed, promptly, poooooossssssshhhhh , into the forest colored ocean: angry waves swatting at the windows like a drooling, rolling monster. “Sshhhhhhhhhh. Listen for the motor.” I watched peanut butter and jelly sandwiches floating by….Listened for my own motor. My heartbeat. Anyone’s heartbeat. I dug my fingers into Kimcam’s thighs and she never made a sound. We held onto Paiger and the boys like priceless Madame Alexander dolls. The Monster pounded at our doors. Slithered his rheumy arms over the canvas rooftop. His breathing was rhythmic. Splish. Splash. Gurgle. The jeep rocked slowly, the ocean was luring us with his lullaby. And then bam! Mr. Bruce shoved it into gear, and an upside down waterfall was spewing from the jeep, spitting at the stars…..and we were off again! Fishtailing it down the coquina sprinkled shoreline.

Last summer we dunerolled down the wet hills into the nighttime sea . Strangers stood on the crumbling seawall and hooped as we made our wreckless descent. Went face first to the ocean. To the kissing, glorious, arms of the ocean, calling our names.....

Feel the love....
Ride the wave....

Saturdays and Starfish

1992
"It's our birthday,
Saturdays and Starfish,
We're five and six"......

I look around. They're building mad castles in the sand with teetering towers and deep,deep tunnels. In their own world. People passing barefooted on the beach smile at the day and night babies in the sand. Jonah is lighter complected than the sun's reflection, platiunum hair drooling down his neck in a rat's tail, eyes the color of see-through. Haley is Sophia Lauren as a child, long limbs stretching, brown eyes a sepia full moon. She is in charge; The Castle Contractor.He follows her lead for a moment and then spins on hands and knees chasing a sandcrab. "A buwfday giff, a buwfday giff"! he chants in circles. She rolls her eyes and continues to dribble wet sand on their steeples.....

I bite my bottom lip and draw. Pray I can capture this moment. When the tide is still and thoughtful, and my babies are at peace...growing in the sun.

2007

My little ones. Bigger than me. He just pulled out of the drive way in his canary yellow "please don't pull me over tonight" Chevy Blazer. A party is growing one text message at a time. She's going for dinner with her long time "Isn't he so cute?" Boy-O... candelight and clinks!

I can't draw fast enough to catch this moment.

Be safe little ones. Happy Birthday, my loves.....

And we all fall down......

We really did go to the beach, I swear. We just spent a lot of time at the Tiki Bar. I mean, they put it right there. We had to trip over it to get to the ocean! So as soon as we emptied the cars, hurling stuff through the motel room doors, we trapsed our little fannies down to the bar and parked it there. "Woo, hoo! We're at the beach"!

The deck teeters over the edge of a steep dune, haphazardly reconstructed by the hurricanes, and the wind howls through the railings at night, making the tarps billow, the ceiling fans sway, and the bartender's tips, if not scooped up right away, blow to the next lucky recipient. Dollar bills scurry across the splintered planks like tiny runaway rodents and float like lost kites in the sky. Little kids, whose parents, hours ago trusted them to the sandbox, chase them in the neon night.

And so we danced. In the sprinkler mist piped in like Musac from the Tiki Bar roof. Barefooted with beers in our hands. Over and over again. We danced with each other, with strangers, with lovers, and hubbies. We danced with other peoples hubbie's, bikers, and the boys from The Brotherhood of Death (you know who you are.....precious skin headed just-turned-21 friends) We danced til one of us had splinters in her toes and one landed on her rump, feet to the sky. We danced until I fell off of a perfectly good chair, cracking a rib, and got up to do it again. (Kind of like when the music stops, the safety bar rises and you have to exit the Tilt-a-Twirl and walk on perfectly flat earth again....Just another day at The Fair!)

We danced until we were silly......

Enough to do other silly things... To roll down the dunes, into high tide, biting the sand straight from the ocean's lips. To give out our email addresses to people we wouldn't give our names to.

Sometimes you have to runaway.
To do what you really want to do.
To heal.
To find the reason.

June 18th, 2007.....
Report from the "he's so handsome" Doctor......

What have you been doing, Kim?
You went to the beach?"

yeah, I did.
And oh, yeah, I drank beer.....

Come here and give me a hug.

and then go do it again....

You're in remission!


Feel the Love......

Tequila Sunrises and other shots.....

5:34 A.M......

Mad cats spitting over chicken bones owned the abandoned Tiki Deck. Their Halloween silhouettes arched and tiptoed across the splintered planks, smiling with greasy lips and staring at me with liquid eyes. I mimicked them. Arched my back and tippy-toed past their rheumy faces, past the early morning stench of Friday night beer bottles....

And dove..... feet first,

fanny next, over the mountainous sand dune, onlto the cold wet sand, bulldozed flat by a midnight tide....

The sleepy pink sky flirtatiously batted her eyes and golden streaks of her mascara rained onto the the glassy sea.

"Good Morning Sunshine".....I whispered.....

"I've come to find peace"......

And then I ran.....in the cold coquina laced sand. Barefooted and free.

At the frothy water's edge, I paused to twirl, to point my toes, to be five years old again and was greeted by myself, a mermaid ghost doing water ballet in the mirror on the thin morning tide. I smiled at my own reflection until she was swept out to sea...

Mounds of blackened sea weed littered the shoreline - dividing the hard cold surface of the morning from the soft sugar dunes of the night. I lifted a foot and sent a tangled mossy pile of it flying....watched as a bridal bouquet of barnacles, treasure shells and bottle caps freed themselves from the knotty web in flight.....

A few more steps and.....

Half buried and half alive, a billowing orange blob lay breathing, exposed and then hiding again with each lick of the waves. It wallowed, quietly gurgling and then gasping. It's lungs filled with water, and then it lay breathless and empty again. I crouched near, but not too close. And then with one steamroller roar, the ocean flipped it on it's belly....

"I'D RATHER BE IN BED"

Giant letters tattoed on it's fluorescent chest.

I drug it's water logged ugliness to safety, into the arms of the Sun. Lay it, flattened, on a mound of sand just high enough to be an island.....

I salute you, sweet stranger,

wearing those dollar-store words....

And once here,

flinging them off in a fit of freedom......

Because,

of course,

there's no place anyone would rather be...

Than here........

Take my hand.....

We're doing it....



Bailing.....
Throwing it all in the back of the car and driving off...



May seven sunsets and seven sunrises.... be blessed....

With perfect strangers we fall in love with...
Ice cold bar beers...
Spicy chicken wings...
Periwinkle soup ,
Barefoot sandals,
Bloody Marys,
Grafitti in the sand.....
Band-aid tattoos,
Found treasures...
Moonlit nights and the cat that jumped over them,
Coolers full of melting ice,
Salty white sheets covered in sand,
A margarita now and then,
Frosty window units dripping through the night,
Sunburns that feel good....
Rock and roll laughter....
Slow dancing to fast songs...
Spooky seawall stories...
And the yellow butterfly.......

Clink!
Here's to getting the days and nights mixed up...



For seven days and seven nights!



Feel the love.......

No shirt. No shoes. No service needed.

We stopped for Hollywood sunglasses , popped on the highway and flew. The miles unraveled behind us blindly, ribbon dancing to the past.

We left it all. The cats, the dog (Please, Lord, let the neighbors feed the dog!), the bills, the wayward child with a payday wad in his pocket, the refinanced -high financed-home-sweet-home, the dirty dishes, dirty laundry, and dirty little secrets. Left ‘em all.

When the tires crunched on the coquina driveway, salty dust dancing in a lazy tornado around the car, we smiled. Big summery run-away smiles. We listened to the last verse of the song and waited for the sand to settle, a flannel blanket on the car. “This is good. This is so good”. Our doors opened and slammed in tandem.

We parked our little fannies three feet from the unlocked motel room door. The splintery Adirondack chairs were just our size. Like Goldilocks and the three bears, we tried them all on until we found the ones that “fit just right”. Comfy, cozy. The ocean roared and hiccupped salty spittle into the air…GOD, I’M IN LOVE…..

“Whatchoo girls doin’?” the big fellow, crossing the grass and ambling our way, drawled with a slow grin on his face. “Bonding” she whispered over the pink Marguerita. “Well, that’s nice. Real nice” “Whatchoo girls drinkin’? he said with his head tilted and his smile sliding sideways into his double chin. “Sunshine” we chimed. We’re drinking in the sunshine. He laughed with his eyes to the sky and turned on his feet like Fred Astaire…..sauntered back to the Tiki Bar.

“Bartender! We need some room service here! Gotta delivery to make!” “See that blonde hippie chic over there……” And so began the week-end.

Bonding with our new best friends.

The three suburban fifty-something ladies, on a girl’s night out. They giggled and drank foo-foo drinks with little pink umbrellas, stewed meatballs in a crock-pot plugged in through the window, and played hopelessly romantic 70’s songs from a giant boom box. At midnight they were dancing on the sidewalk, in their two-piece (not bikini, thank God, not bikini) swimsuits and cover-ups.

The little league Dads and their tribe of youngin’s. On a Field-Trip of dreams. The kids ran in an endless “You’re gonna crack your head open and knock your teeth out” circle…. around the picnic tables, down the sidewalks, through the bar, into the pool, onto the deck, in your room, my room, their room…laughter trailing behind them like bubbles from a magic wand.

The big fellow and his brother. The chef with his guitar. The absolutely adorable bartender with no hair and tattoos. The brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and the biggest baby I ever saw from Indiana.

The cops. Sauntering by at 2:30 in the morning. “You folks need to go to bed now”….respectfully shining their flashlights at our barefeet and not blinding us with their intrusion. “You got all day tomorrow, Coach".....

The housekeepers, smiling toothlessly and knocking in early morning whisper tones. “Well, if you don’t want no towels or nothing’, do you need ice?” “We gotta get it before the bar opens up again”

We left a good tip.

The tires spun on the too hot, too dry gravel . I adjusted the rear view mirror and gunned into traffic. There was no looking back. Only a lazy tornado spinning in the distance.

Half way

“That’s the way it used to be, motels on the beach. Now, It’s high-rises, parking garages, shadows” “Florida, the way it used to be, is gone”

Silly tourist….

“Take my hand and come with me…..”

I’m off on a road trip. Around the corner. To a fairytale. To layers of peeling aqua and pink paint. To a cement pool with dolphins furiously painted on her bumpity finish. To a Tiki-Bar with a one -armed, one- man band. To the smell of rotting oyster shells and French fry oil. To Michelob’s and Bud Lights on Ice. To stray cats feeding on the left-overs, never tame, but always game. To a window unit blowing icy air on my face, dripping on my feet. To a midnight moon smiling, winking, as we wade past, ankle deep in the salt water, skipping over jelly fish glowing in the dark. To the broken shells, forgotten by the tide. To salty towels draped over rusty lawn chairs. To McDonalds in the morning, “a large coffee with cream and sugar, please…”. To late check-outs….

I’m off on a road trip…..

Peace, love, and everything in-between……
is just a fairytale…..

Welcome to my world…….

Burn, baby, burn....

The terrazzo floors were cold. It didn’t matter that it was August. And gritty. Sand under my fat-padded little feet. I ran on my tip toes. A plastic bag of cheerios in my right hand. From the kitchen to the TV. Laughing.

The cartoons were on. In black and white.

He sat on the floor. In pajamas, too. Humped over. Scrunched close to the TV. I ran up behind him, behind the plaid flannel shirt and matching shorts, the greasy black hair . And flung myself. Bammm! Laugh! The rabbit ears on the TV matched his hair and for a moment, from the back , I had crashed into a giant Bunny! He made a sound, “hmmmmmppphhhhh”, and scrunched further into himself. He wasn’t fun. But he was here. Sometimes he smiled. Squinted his eyes and smiled. Most of the time, he didn’t.

Mama finished the dishes. Set the coffee cup upside down into the plastic drainer and sighed. “I’m gonna hang the clothes out. Don’t leave the room”. I didn’t know then that living at the beach had it’s drawbacks. We didn’t have a dryer.

“I was only gone a moment” she would later say. She had toted the wicker laundrey basket out the back door into the sandy yard, and just two or three swimsuits later, realized that the clothespins were in a little plastic basket in the house, leftover from the “take the laundrey down” game we had played the day before. She sighed and her barefeet prickled and high-heeled it through the the hot sand and back into the house.

She was horrified.

I stood silently screaming …

melting….

In the middle of the terrazzo floor….

pajamas engulfed…..

The back of his black head, wearing the silhouette of the rabbit ears, never moved. He reached over and turned the volume up……

Daytripping.....

The sun started a riot. Smiling from the sky. Rising on her own. Flipping lazy clouds, like pancakes, out of her view. She whispered on our cheeks, and cackled kind of haughty as she kissed us on our knees...."Follow me, for free".....

We put the top down . Buckled up and took off.....

Hugging the highway, feeling her heat.

Past the row after row of make-believe castles, shuttered up for the winter, with their chain-locked gated lives.....past the private little yachts, Carnival Cruise size, with their tacky little names....."Octopussy" and "The Mare-in-her", past the tennis courts, the Valet parking attendents in bermudas and jackets....

We revved the engine at red lights and bolted on green.....

...Shot the peace sign at housekeepers dusting the cans, tourists in rick-o-shays rattling the streets, and "married-for-money's" toting their tribes....

We snaked between the palm trees and cocacabanas, banged U-turns in Membership Only Concrete worlds, and played chicken with the draw bridges and uniformed men....

We followed the sun ,with her bright blue petticoat, 100 miles south.....

Until they would let us in.......

Where the beer was ice cold, and the barstools were crooked. Where the ladies room door was propped closed with your foot. Where the "We sale sea shells" played music we could dance to. Where the people were comfortable wearing their skin.

"Theres no place like home......."

Will work for beer....

18 years have passed since I walked out the front door of my first little house, drove in reverse down the dead end street....

And started over again....

No map, no plan, no stick, no bandana....just an unairconditioned car piled with youngin's
and
the belief that I could do this.....

And we did.

Some of the best times of my life, hunkered down in our "Are we homeless, yet?" days.... Skinny and I at the kitchen table brewing up "there must be a way" dreams....

Moon Stars and Paper started a chain of love, dig up a picture from 20 years ago, and feel the love. I spent five minutes plundering through the suitcases of memories, but before I made it back that far, my fingers fell on this one, and I knew. It's exact copy has been plastered on my refrigerator door for 17 years.

Skinny on the right...
It's a hot, hot Sunday morning and we're packing up. When we get there, we'll plop down in the the old wooden chairs, arranged in a perfect circle, stretch our legs out in front of us and stack our barefeet in the middle of the cement meeting place, toe to toe. The flakey ole paint, pink, aqua, yellow and green will stick to our bikinied rumps and our Ban de Solie'd thighs and we'll smile at the sky and the passers-by, the regulars, the waitress, and Tony and Joe. Ice cold beers arrive and disappear. Evaporate by the heat and our unquenchable thirst. We'll laugh and tell stories, make friends, dare each other silly , maybe even cause a ruckuss.... We'll order a giant hamburger, all the way, with greasy fries, and a dill pickle, that will sweat in the sun. We'll ask for a knife and divide it into thirds....

This sign was good for two and half Sundays at the beach. "Do Not Jump The Fence" sat propped up in the garage, we'd pull it out, toss it in the trunk and gift it to Joe when we ran out of credit.....

When I run away....

When I run away....I want to live by the sea....

In a salty little shanty....with the night air blowing through the rusty screens. Where the terazza floors are etched by the sands of time and gritty under my feet. Where sandspurs grow in the yard and probably nothing else, but terazza pots of potpourri and spices are lined up like little soldiers, crooked little soldiers, in the window sills....

Where the wind howls at night and wraps her loving arms a thousand times around "my house", threatening to whisp us off into the oceans, but really.....just playing with my mind. Where the sun is tempermental and scorching and she spits her rays onto the rooftop like laughter .....and the tar between the shingles simmers and smokes at noon.

I want to run barefoot to the mailbox.....playing hot potatoe on the driveway....collecting postcards from loved one from the rusty ole box, flag up to the skies....

I want to dive onto clean white sheets at night, too small for the double bed, and too thin to hide the mattress seams, stretched to their limit and fresh from hanging on the line, soaking up the salty air....

I want to walk , heels first, toes scrunching, in the early morning sand.....the moon falling with the tide and the sun peeking her little pink nose over the waves, playing hide and go seek.....

I want to dance under the endless sky. Drinking up laughter and wishing on random stars. I want a rusty ole fridge in the carport, chucked full of Michelob light and watermelons I thumped at the produce stand.

I want to pop jiffy pop late at night and watch black and white re-runs, static and all....feed the neighborhood cats out the back door....

Until then.....
I live here.
In my house.
My little love.

And every now and then I drive to Blakely
and pretend
I'm gonna move to the middle of nowhere
and
sit on the porch
and drink beer
and wave
at
friendly passers-by....

Just give me peace......