H.S.L.

I mildly understand the comfort that is home. What I mean by that is, I've never quite pinpointed where that coveted location stands for me. A little town in Florida comes closest to the word's dictionary definition. There, the Traveler's Palms are an exuberant green, and every other thing that touches the ground is sunshine. I like to soak my feet in that big tub of Atlantic water, let the breeze weave its oceanic magic into my hair, and relieve the symptoms of a sometimes suffocating city life.

It's what I leave with each time that feels the most like home: the smell of a sunset I can't find anywhere else in the world, that gentle feeling in my palm, like a friend just squeezed my hand.

It is my most familiar feeling: as I drive off, or fly away, I am certain that I will return.

olb.

key west: host to my most favorite ghost

In Key West, the sun is a blaze of fire burning coal into the teeth of the locals, and flames into the hearts of the sailors. Beautiful fairy-like boys ride around taxi-like bicycles, wanting to tote around lobster-like faces of people from lands where the sun is not a blaze of fire, but a puddle of melted ice.


Their fluttering eyes linger on me like the soft wings of butterflies, as I walk faster and faster to the heart of Duval. In the streets, there are signs for ice cream made by tired, burning hands and cigars are hanging off tattered lips, as they puff the smoke of this forgotten tropical paradise into faltering pink skies.


The old men all look like Hemingway- but that is probably because they hear his ghost sometimes, creaking through their kitchens as they snack at a voracious pace on key-lime pie (for fear that he will ask for a slice.) If I had a lock of sorts, hanging on the door to my regrets, Ernest knows, I too would choose this Key to click it open.

Down at Mile Zero, the whole US of Fucking A breathes down my young and fragile neck. The sun is a blaze of fire again, but somewhere far away from here- we feel the last ray of life before all turns black and full of ghastly possibilities.

Jack and his four seagulls take a nap, their back turned to the spectacle- the blaze of fire having burnt out all remnants of their Key West illusions long ago. But not I.

I stand there for a while perplexed, with what some would call a half-crescent rising to my lips; wondering: Why couldn't I write things in a more simple form?
Perhaps like Hemingway when he described a fish or bull.
The sun drowns somewhere below our feet and I leave this non-existing mile, this door, this Key to nowhere- I cannot escape the fact that I am more complex than it will ever be.