Transcript
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I SEE WONDERFUL THINGS by Wynne Hungerford
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he car smells like dead roses and cinnamon. Priscilla keeps a dozen mason jars packed with her homemade potpourri beneath the seats. One time, she steered into a grocery store parking lot as her car ran out of gasoline, sold potpourri to shoppers, and made enough money to buy two gallons from the station across the street. My parents call Priscilla “crafty” and she calls them “workaholics who neglect their only child.” She tells me to roll down the passenger window because I start sniffling. I wedge my backpack between my feet, so she won’t see the note my music teacher stapled there earlier. My third grade class has a big pageant in a few days and I still don’t know the melody for “We Belonged to the Land.” The teacher ordered me to practice more. Everybody thinks I am slow. Only because I tried to lick to the center of my pencil eraser while we took standardized tests. I could’ve done good, I swear. Priscilla sees the note. Her curled five-inch fingernails are painted lime green, which looks nice against her brown hands. She knows I am not stupid and doesn’t make fun of the extra work. She says, “I’m taking you to Minnie’s house. That girl has a golden voice if I ever heard one. She’ll help you.” “She doesn’t talk much,” I say. We pull out of my elementary school parking lot. Priscilla says, “Anytime you’re thrown into a situation with somebody, you take what you need from them. Be nice and take what you need. No school would teach you that, but it’s mighty true. What’s this music teacher’s name?” “Mr. Cochran.” Priscilla tells me that she was never picky when it came to men. She didn’t seek dates whose names began with C, it just turned out that way. Carl gave sponge baths in a nursing home. Charlie traced his ancestry back to Dutch fur traders. Clancey wore a rented Elvis costume the day he disappeared in a Cadillac. She spent a long time wondering why the rest of the alphabet was shunned from her love life. Then it made sense. Priscilla’s father only had a thumb and pointer finger on his right hand––the other three lost in the mill. When he did the crossword from the newspaper every morning, he curled those two fingers around a pencil, making a C. It sounded like a stretch, but Priscilla swore that after she made the connection, the spell was broken. She married a man named Marvel. Except, he has cancer. “He’s not doing so hot right now,” she says. “Still sick as a dog.” As if on cue, we see a dead mutt on the roadside and beetles cover the pink organs, green shells glimmering in the sunlight. “Do you believe it?” she asks. We pull in front of Minnie’s house. A small white thing crowned with broken antennas. Everybody knows where everybody lives in Fair Play, even if you aren’t friendly. It comes in handy when bad things happen. Mr. Tidwell saw smoke rise from Mr. Blake’s land two weeks ago, and called the fire department. The two men had never met before
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the ordeal, but became dart-throwing buddies soon after. That sort of intimacy doesn’t work so good when couples holler about electric bills and shoot guns in their backyards and throw hot barbecue coals into squirrel nests. You can’t get away with anything. I may only be eight years old, but I know what kind of place I live in. That is why I want to become a performing waitress. You know, the ones who wear roller skates to work, put pink straws in glasses of Coke, and recite sonnets while carrying plates. Priscilla is the only person who believes in me. We walk to the front door, her hips twisting with every step. She tells me that some people have a natural sexy walk and others do not. I’ll grow into mine. I think about the postcard of the Brooklyn Bridge she gave me once, how it rests beneath my pillow and plants dreams of taxis and city lights in my head. Priscilla cranes her neck, looking at the woods behind the house, and says, “I bet there’s some fine mud out there.” She taps those long fingernails on my head and her mouth looks like a big frosted donut. Rummaging through her snakeskin purse for a bobby pin, she clucks about white folks’ manes. She has never mentioned her age, but I guess she’s sixty years old since her eyelids droop, but there’s a boy in my class with lilting eyes, too. Frank is only ten––he got held back twice––and kids gossip about us marrying. Frank and Patty sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. I got so mad one day, I emptied a whole tube of acrylic paint on Frank’s head. He was the only one who wouldn’t fight back. Minnie’s daddy opens the door. He introduces himself as El Rodney and I can’t help but notice how small he is. Priscilla explains that I need help before the pageant and El Rodney nods, saying it’s just fine. His blue jeans look brand new and they are so tight, his stomach rolls over the waist. He makes a loud, grumbling noise. “I’m starving,” he says. “I’ve got a colonoscopy tomorrow, my first.” “You won’t remember a thing,” Priscilla says. “I never do.” He rubs his stomach and says, “Been on the toilet all day. My doctor says spring cleaning your bowels is healthy, but I don’t feel it. I’d rather not know if I have cancer.” Priscilla holds her hands in the air like the police are after her. In this September heat, sweat gathers at her hairline. She’s thinking about her husband’s sickness, and I am not supposed to mention it because Marvel gets embarrassed, but he’s got breast cancer. She says, “I’m leaving before he says one more foolish thing.” And to me: “Learn your boogie woogie.” Inside, Minnie makes me practice breathing. We stand barefoot on the hardwood floors, and splinters burrow in my feet. Inhale. The wallpaper is sea-foam green, a color I expect from old people’s homes. Exhale. Pictures of Minnie hang on the walls. She is quiet at school, which makes it hard to realize she has an outside life. The music teacher let her play his bass recorder once, and even though Minnie had never practiced, she unlocked secret sounds. Notes dripped to the floor like honey. She wears bows in her blond hair, which her mother makes from silk scraps at the alteration shop. If Minnie wanted to be a performing waitress, no one would stop her. We practice songs about wrens and palmetto trees and colonists. The theme of the pageant is South Carolina pride. Sunshine and clear skies and boardwalks. Swing sets and
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early settlements. The songs make things sound better than real life. We don’t memorize lyrics about feral dogs, kudzu draped over power lines, or the shoe store’s gum-ball machine that has been empty my whole life. I could pick up the melodies faster if I related to the words. Minnie tries to explain what “We Belonged to the Land” is about. Sitting cross-legged on the floor and picking her toes, she says, “It’s about people loving a place, even if they don’t own it. This was England’s land, but the colonists were the ones working here. Don’t you read the history book?” From the bathroom, her daddy shouts, “Owning land is the best thing people ever came up with. Hernando DeSoto should have kept it to himself. I put the El before Rodney because I’m in touch with my Spanish roots.” Each strand of Minnie’s hair looks like a harp string. She practices breathing with a thing she calls the “diaphragm” but I know that’s got to do with baby-making. I say, “You don’t look one bit Spanish.” She whispers, “My daddy elaborates on untruths.” A metal belt buckle clatters against bathroom tile and the toilet flushes. El Rodney leans in the doorway, wearing an expression like he’s just swallowed a rat-tail. “Am I allowed to drink beer before this procedure?” Minnie shakes her head. He stomps the floor with his right boot. With the quietness of deer, citrus air-freshener drifts out of the bathroom. He looks my way, saying, “Look in the backyard. There’s a gravesite in the woods and Spaniards rest in the soil.” She says, “Daddy believes bones say what we cannot.” My class is lined up on rickety bleachers. The tallest boys tell jokes in the back, while I stand beside a girl who always sneezes into library books and sniffs white board markers until her eyes glaze over like a dead goldfish. The air conditioner stirs dust, causing half the kids to get watery eyes. Everybody else complains about the heat, and is it just me, or is there a dead squirrel somewhere? The rotten smell is Frank’s feet. He stands behind me. Kids teased me about it during lunch, but I followed Priscilla’s advice and imagined them getting run-over by a bright green John Deere. The guidance counselor once said I demonstrated psychotic tendencies, so I stole a fountain pen from her office that writes upside-down and if you go in the third bathroom stall, you’ll see the picture I drew of her with shoes caught on fire. It’s funny because in real life that fire would spread up her clothes and engulf her brain. Mr. Cochran grips a wad of music sheets in his right hand, and draws imaginary curlicues in the air with the left. His conducting is supposed to match up with the music but the connection isn’t clear. We run through “Sandlappers” and our high-pitched voices make an invisible tornado in the air. No one tells me what the song is about. I single out Minnie’s voice, the eye of the storm. We finish the song, breathless, and the music teacher glares at us through foggy glasses. He says, “I want all of you to gargle before the pageant tomorrow. One cup of saltwater. Don’t eat anything too hot or too cold, and no smoking. If you’re going to laugh, please limit it to two-minute bursts. Nurture your vocal chords.”
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Frank pulls up his T-shirt and slaps his belly. He asks, “Can we leave?” Mr. Cochran nods. He would be much happier if he could marry a dashboard Hula dancer. We funnel through the wooden doors and gasp for fresh air. I think it is going to rain. The school’s bricks turn the color of cooling lava. Nobody says goodbye to me as they settle in cars. Nobody waves while filling up the school bus like cream in a cannoli. Priscilla says they only exist in movies and I wonder why she isn’t waiting for me like usual. As a performing waitress, I’ll bring a freshly baked cannoli to every happy couple and when they take that first bite, cream will fill their mouths and I will recite a monologue filled with “thee” and “thou” and love. The auditorium door creaks open behind me. Mr. Cochran walks outside, papers bunched under his arm, and glasses nearly sliding off his nose. I decide not to run away from him, because the brave dogs on television never do. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be more canine, so long as you don’t tell anybody. That’s how I got stuck under “observation” in the nurse’s office for an entire day once. When the overweight nurse tried to stick a tongue depressor in my mouth, she mistook my yelp for a bark. It’s on my permanent record. A pack of cigarettes peeks out of Mr. Cochran’s shirt pocket when he leans to grab a loose sheet of paper. Big sweat stains grow under his armpits, and he has a wife at home who touches his gross laundry. He should be with the Hula dancer. There is a photograph on my refrigerator of me wearing a grass skirt, taken before I broke out in hives and my parents discovered my allergy to fake grass. I don’t want to be any man’s Hula dancer until age forty. Priscilla says I shouldn’t get tied down while my sexy walk is still fresh. “You did better today, Patty,” Mr. Cochran says, “but don’t forget what I told you.” He has told me plenty of things. My singing sounds like the gibbons at the zoo. My shoes should be tied in double-knots. My fingers are too short to play the recorder. My parents must’ve gotten their real baby swapped at the hospital, because if they are smart enough to design chandeliers and run a whole business making them, they deserve a smarter kid. He never actually said that I was swapped with my parents’ real baby. I wonder on my own. “If you don’t do well in this pageant, you’ll get an unsatisfactory grade in music.” I say, “Were tubas left behind by aliens?” “You might get held back. You might have to repeat the third grade.” “Because they sure don’t look normal to me.” “Did you miss the bus?” he asks. “Priscilla’s coming,” I say. “She cooked a batch of chili so spicy last year, her nephew got a fever of 104˚.” She shows up thirty minutes after Mr. Cochran leaves. Something is on her mind because I sit in the front seat without any arguing. The weather is changing. Priscilla apologizes for being late. When I ask what happened, she mentions a business meeting. She hates business, though. My parents are the ones who run the most successful chandelier business in the Southeast. They work out of a warehouse on the outskirts of Fair Play, near railroad tracks. They have design studios, lasers that cut crystal, welders, glassblowers, artists-in-residence, and a break room with the third-largest antler chandelier in North America. Things stop being beautiful when they get that big. Priscilla thinks
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parents should “raise their own crop” but she doesn’t mind looking after me since mine work so much. She likes my company. “Was rehearsal good?” she asks. I say, “We sang that sandlapper song, but I don’t know what those are. How’re you supposed to sing about something you don’t understand?” Her tongue clicks against the roof of her mouth. “Your parents coming to the pageant tomorrow?” I notice we aren’t taking the road home, saying, “Forgot to ask.” That riles her up and the car accelerates and mason jars clink together beneath the seats. Priscilla sees right to my core. “I’ll be there, sugar,” she says. She parks on the side road, woods flanking us. Her normal high heel sandals are replaced with tennis shoes. We fill our arms with mason jars and the potpourri makes me feel woozy. I follow Priscilla into the woods, and this is a time when she might ramble about finger nail polish, discounts at the shoe store, or her high school love life, but she does not say anything. She hums the kind of song you wish you were born to. I trip over something. A small stone sticks out of the ground. The pediatrician may think my brain has abnormal activity going on, but when I see a dozen more of these stones, I know we’re standing in an old graveyard. Priscilla says a man getting breast cancer is “abnormal” but I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone that. She dumps the potpourri on the ground, motioning for me to do the same. We line up the empty jars on the soft earth. I keep waiting for her to explain, because posters in the school hallways tell me patience is a virtue. She digs with bare hands and fills a jar with the soil. When she starts scraping again, one of her long fingernails breaks off. The lime green nail sticks out of the dark ground, and for a split-second, I think it is attached to a body buried underneath out feet. I can’t take it anymore. “What’s going on?” I ask. Priscilla asks me to help. “I need more,” she says. “More.” Bugs fly over our heads. “You know that song you sing about sandlappers?” she asks. I cup my hands into C-shapes to scoop easily. I fill the jars, and with every handful of soil, I realize how much closer to a skeleton I get. I don’t know what I’ll do if I dig up a bone. “Sandlappers are people who eat the earth, mud, soil, sand––whatever you call it. You started talking about them songs a while back, and it got me thinking. Marvel needs some healing.” She holds up a jar and trees reflect off the glass. “I hear this heals.” I screw the tops back on the jars, and Priscilla talks about nutrients. Her healthiest tomato plants grew where a dog was buried. Nature recycles. I am forbidden to watch the nightly news, but I once snuck out of bed and flipped to channel four. There was a story about a man who died in a restaurant booth, and before his waitress called the police, she stole his wallet. That woman stole from that slumped over man to make herself stronger. People do whatever it takes, and while most only want to help themselves, Priscilla is helping someone else. The world is less spooky knowing that kindness exists. Wiping my hands on my shorts, I look through the trees and see a small house across the way. I say, “Doesn’t Minnie live right there?” She shrugs and says, “She might, baby.”
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It took me too long to make the connection. Maybe I am slow like everybody says. Admitting that you are exactly what people say you are is no cakewalk. “El Rodney and I got an understanding.” We start walking out of the woods and she adds, “I was late picking you up because I talked to him this afternoon. The colonoscopy drugs hadn’t worn off yet.” My parents are working late tonight, because they’re designing a chandelier made out of recycled soda bottles for the CEO of a health food company. So Priscilla takes me to her house. She lives in a small neighborhood behind a bait and tackle shop. The houses all look the same and sprinklers are in every yard. Priscilla says sprinklers are for “watering plants, not children,” and she has never let me play in one. We carry the mason jars inside. Looking at me through the glass, a centipede wiggles his feet. Marvel sits on a wrought-iron chair in the living room. Aside from a sofa, it’s just patio furniture. I like it this way. He wears a puffy vest, which is construction-worker orange and zipped high enough to cover his chest. Priscilla and Marvel exchange hey babys and he nods to me like we’re enemy generals in a battle. No matter how scary he sounds, he’s harmless. Priscilla places all the jars, except for one, inside a cabinet. She uses an ice cream scooper to get soil out and offers it to Marvel. He says, “Come on, baby. You playing a game?” “Natural healing,” she says. I like hearing the two of them speak. It’s not always nice, but there is something real behind it. “That ain’t going in my mouth.” “Isn’t it worth a try?” she asks. He takes one of her hands. He kisses it. “I’m sick, baby. There’s probably bugs in that shit. You want me to get a bug disease, too?” He looks at her hand, the broken fingernail, and says, “What happened?” “Digging,” I said. “You an archaeologist now? That’s cool.” Marvel kisses each of the lime green fingernails and in between each finger he says, “Mmm.” We sit around for a while. He doesn’t touch the ice cream scooper, but he wiggles his ears for me. Priscilla sits in front of a TV dinner tray covered with flower petals, sprigs of rosemary, pieces of bark, cinnamon sticks, and pyramids of dark spices––her work station. Handfuls of the shag carpet feel like a horse’s mane. Marvel takes the socks off his feet, slides them over his large hands, and puts on a puppet show. His smile is good enough to make you feel safe. One sock is a doctor and the other is a patient. In a growling voice, the doctor says, “You sick.” The patient looks at the ground. The doctor says, “Your time is up.” “I never planted the rose bushes my wife wanted,” says the patient with a soft voice. “I made promises.” Priscilla covers her face.
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“Your body is a broken machine,” says the doctor. “My body is a broken machine,” says Marvel. My parents call when they get home from work, but I don’t want Priscilla to drive me home. I like seeing Marvel’s big bug-eyes tremble when his wife walks through the door after he hasn’t seen her all day. It begins to rain and the air smells like warm pavement. As soon as we are gone, I know Marvel will eat the soil. He was too embarrassed to do it in front of a child. My P.E. teacher may have claimed I don’t know anything about team sport mentality, but I do know something about sandlappers’ hearts. My parents and I sit at the kitchen table, them eating cereal, and me staring at buttered bread they forgot to toast. They wear rubber boots, waders, flannel shirts, camouflage visors, and bandanas around their necks. A design plan for a fifteen-foot chandelier rests on the table. We have a calendar featuring fancy cathedrals, antique fire pokers, leather chairs, closets filled with blankets, and in my parents’ office, a world globe made from an inflated sheep bladder. We don’t have any chandeliers, though. Only scrapped models in the garage. That never caught my attention until now. “Why are you dressed funny?” I ask. My parents say they are spending the day at recycling centers and the landfill, collecting plastic bottles. My father says, “We have to be prepared. Rats, disease, homeless people––who knows what we’ll encounter. Interacting with the raw material is essential, though. Physical contact deepens the artist’s conversation.” My mother traces the design with her spoon and doesn’t notice drops of milk dampen the paper. She says, “See these bold lines, Patty? Trapeze artists inspired us.” Her head sways. “Can you picture human bodies swinging through the air, oscillating above the earth, defying gravity? The arc of their movement, like the arc of life, ends only when you let go. Do you see it?” I say, “My pageant is tonight.” My mother says, “Oh honey, we have a photographer visiting from Southern Living.” Her bandana has come untied, but she’s too happy about the publicity to notice. “We’re having a reception at the warehouse. You like Brie don’t you? I’ll bring home a plate of Brie for you.” “Have you used the rock hammer I bought you?” my father asks. “My father gave me a rock hammer when I was young, and it was a beautiful introduction into the world of sculpture. So organic. Doesn’t that sound more appealing than singing?” “I don’t have a choice,” I say. My mother’s spoon clinks against the table. She points her finger in the air and says, “But that is all we have. To hold on, or to let go.” “Oui,” says my father. “Oui.” Even if I were the first kid genius from Fair Play, he still wouldn’t have thought I was good enough. One time, I was a baby with soft skin and none of my freckles had shown up yet. I specifically remember him changing my diaper, muttering that I should be able to do it myself. My first memory, I swear. He also got frustrated while teaching me to swing, because that whole “pump your legs” business made no sense. My parents had a
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teacher conference when my bad standardized test scores came back. I sat in the hall and saw a yellow jacket swarm around a fluorescent light. Afterwards, my father’s face had three new wrinkles, one for each word he couldn’t shake: She’s not bright. My parents won’t come to the pageant tonight, but I knew that all along. School goes by slow. I pretend to work on math problems when the teacher patrols like a shark, chug my chocolate milk at lunch, and spit in the library’s hand sanitizer while no one looks. It’s hard to tell what caused this nervous lightning storm in my stomach. The pageant or trespassing on El Rodney’s land. Mr. Cochran passes me in the hallway, glares, and keeps walking. His shoes squeak against the floor and those echoes roll through the hallway, enter my ears, and tingle in my fingertips. In my regular bathroom stall, someone has written “Patty doesn’t wipe.” I kick the toilet until my toes throb, then imagine the bathroom at the restaurant where I’ll be a performing waitress. There will be marks on the floor from my skates, lavender towels, and a mirror that will only show the best version of yourself. Priscilla should see her true reflection, because she doesn’t know how good she really is. Before the pageant begins, the audience mumbles and settles in folding chairs. Industrial fans cool the auditorium, and I stand behind the midnight-blue velvet curtain, thankful that our singing will be muffled. There is nothing wrong with repeating a grade but I want more than anything for my singing to be okay. Minnie stands a few rows behind me and we wave at each other. A big silver bow is clipped in her hair. Her father will be in the crowd. So will Priscilla. It took five whole minutes to clean the dirt from my fingernails last night. Minnie says, “Keep singing no matter what.” I’m not sure what she means, but I smile anyway. Mr. Cochran makes opening announcements. Staring at that velvet curtain for too long makes my vision blurry, so I close my eyes until the first piano notes ring out. We sing “Under the Boardwalk” and “Sunny Yellow Jessamine” and “Country Things.” My hands sweat, but I remember the melodies. Priscilla says if you get nervous in front of crowds, you should imagine every head as a balloon. Take a needle in your mind and pop those balloons. She wears a leopard-print blouse and a tight skirt that “subdues” her love handles. Her smile is wide as Loyal Devil Creek. Mr. Cochran smiles too, and the lyrics of each song feel clean like peppermint in my mouth. Frank doesn’t even smell like a dead squirrel. We are nearly finished singing the songs on the program, when I see El Rodney teetering on the edge of his seat. His nose pointed in the air like a hound dog, sniffing. He rises, follows the smell, and stops when he reaches Priscilla. Over crooning classmates and thrumming fans, El Rodney’s nose scrunches as he angrily talks to Priscilla. A rip is visible in his too-tight jeans when they leave the auditorium. My first instinct is to dart off stage and follow them. Minnie warned me about this, and because she helped me before, I trust her. Priscilla does not hear us sing “Sandlappers,” but that does not matter. That song makes her joints stiff each morning, makes the wind chimes cry from the porch, makes the sky bluely carry on despite sickness and disappointment and exhaustion. We love those fields of cotton on bright September morns. On this September night, each breath of air is capable of so much. We’re proud of South Carolina, the place where we were born. This is true, but I can’t stay here forever. Yes we live in the very
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finest state. Priscilla says the best state is turning the soil before tomato planting until you feel dizzy from heat and hawks appear as angels. We finish the song and the velvet curtain drops. I run to the parking lot. El Rodney yells at Priscilla, who is leaning against a stranger’s truck. “How many times you want me to say it?” he asks. “My yard smelled funny, so I followed it to the Spaniards’ graves. I found a mess of potpourri and a dug-up hole. You smell just like that grave and don’t deny it neither.” “What were you doing outside? You should’ve been resting,” says Priscilla. The night is warm and a snakeskin is stretched across the free-throw line of the nearby basketball court. El Rodney says, “I was visiting my people.” “You said I could borrow dirt,” she says. “You took advantage of me and disturbed graves. I’d never agree to that.” He hooks his thumbs in his belt loops, saying, “Do you think I’m afraid because you’re black?” “You should be afraid because I am a desperate woman,” she says. “Desperate to make my husband better.” The idea swells in El Rodney’s chest. He thinks about selling this soil to sick people, a real business. “I’ll cut him open,” he says. “That dirt’s mine and I want it back. I’ll cut him wide open and crawl inside. Claim what is rightly mine.” We don’t belong to things so much as they belong to us. “He’s already been cut,” Priscilla says. “The doctors sliced into his chest, but that’s fine if you want to dig around. Get in line.” Her eyes swelled big as two glossy planets. “Grace him with your scalpel, conquistador.” I pick up a broken piece of headlight from the parking spot I crouch in. I move toward El Rodney, hoping to stick him. He grabs me by the waist, and I thrash like a hooked bass and cut my hand from gripping that shard so tight. He walks me to the playground and drops me by the monkey bars. Priscilla shouts, “No wonder you came out of that colonoscopy clean. You’re hollow.” “I love my little girl.” “Maybe,” she says. He unbuttons his pants so he can breathe easier. “And those people aren’t even Spanish,” she says. “Probably old tobacco farmers.” He paces in front of parked cars. Hands pressed against his ears as if sirens are overwhelming him. Minnie walks over to the playground. She snuck out of the auditorium after me. Her silver bow is an alien spaceship and the plastic slide glitters with dew. She does not go to her father. She says, “You remembered all the songs.” It feels like someone has broken an enormous hourglass and this playground sand is a measure of all time. I say, “The teachers love you. That’s not fair.” “You wouldn’t say that if you knew my future,” says Minnie. “In the future, I’ve got nothing.” “What about me?” I ask. A moth flutters around us, as if drowning mid-air, and lands on her shoulder. She says, “I see wonderful things.”
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I think about digging in her backyard yesterday, and remember flipping through a book in the Reading Corner of the classroom about King Tut’s tomb. I want to tell everybody that a stupid person would forget the word “archaeologist” but not me. I remember how that archaeologist peeked into that chamber, and saw wonderful things nobody could have imagined or expected. If you cut me open right now, you’d be surprised what you might discover once your eyes adjust to the dark.
PHILIP C. KOLIN Memorial Day at Panama City Beach It’s Memorial Day and every lamp Post is a patriot, flags flying in their lapels. In Panama City Beach the girls Wear their new suntans like a medal You don’t take off. The ripples of the waves Wave to the lampposts that return the wave. Even the sun is pro-America today. Everyone Could receive a medal, and the girls Keep texting. Maybe it’s the waves They’re sending messages to To come home or go back, empty Of all that foam on shore. But I’m moving away, like the waves, from the day To honor the dead. The brave. The free. That’s the message the flags send To the waves that the girls text to— Whoever takes a message on a beach? Maybe the girls’ texting is an updated Version of finding a message in a bottle That’s been floating around the waves For centuries. But the waves couldn’t read Back then like the girls do now. And let’s face it, Waves have gotten a lot smarter since 1776. They’re almost finished building the new Bridge across from Pier Park Mall, swanky. They say it will have a row of flags on it And girls with medals texting the waves Beneath.
