Lost Shoes
One
night we drove up river for pozole.
Pedro
had been drinking all day
But
we let him come if he’d not make a fool of himself.
He’d
lost his shoes, they were expensive flip-flops and
He
kept bringing it up and the girl; I can no longer remember her name,
Told
him to “shut up about the damn shoes…” she must have said that twenty-five
times.
The
cicadas were like sirens; they were so loud you had to pause sometimes to let
them settle down a little so you could talk.
We
got to the pozole place and they were just about to close but they said to come
in anyway.
Rain
started to fall in big diamond drops and pretty soon it was coming down in sheets.
Sheets of rain; I’d heard of that before.
We
ate the pozole and went outside where it was so dark, the only light from the
little jungle café, and you couldn’t see one foot go down in front of the
other. I held my hands out to catch my balance.
Puddles
turned into streams around our ankles and Pedro laughed at us when we said we
were afraid our shoes would float away in the black nothing.
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Thank you for reading.....
