By: Shelly Rae Rich
Tide comes in and brings the sand sharks, looking for dusk munchies. He hasn’t been away from me for a whole day, and I feel like dinner. Wanna, wanna, hunny? I sunbathe topless to make them crazy, maybe make me more powerful cause I could break their fish mouths, crush those torsos. I’m the Great White.
My beach has white sand. There’s a woman who cooks for me, I think I pay. It’s saffron rice and conch with scotch bonnets. She makes a mean dish. I clean the bathroom.
It’s midnight and she’s getting drunk with me on Pusser’s Rum we mixed with pineapple juice and more rum. She has some talking bird named Coconut she’s trained to say “Come see, boo” and “Yah-mahn.” I keep thinking he’s come back. I never noticed he sounded like a bird.
The magazines say there are ten ways to tell when he’s lost interest and I missed them all. Not that it matters much. A crab bites my toe and I offer another to him.
We smoke fine green with the little red hairs. I ask her for brownies, but she’s off the clock. Her lips are pretty when we shotgun and I kiss her a little. She giggles, slaps my bottom and runs off to swim. I just watch the light bounce off the tide, out now, and she barely makes a ripple.
Delightful piece, kept me guessing, kept me right in the moment – lovely