Don't Belong Here
Everything here is hard, except for you. Everything here is dry, except you. Everything here is angular – not you. You are a plump steamed dumpling slathered in sauce to shield you from the sun.
This place is hard, but you aren’t. You drive with her through the barrio looking for dogs. She throws food along the sandy road for the ones too afraid to come near.
The sea perfect despite being named for a murderer. She swims through it like a dolphin, like a shark, like an Olympiad. You wade in water almost up to your waist, preoccupied looking for shells and stones to take back home with you. Everyone else sits by the pool, only getting in it to walk up to the so-called swim-up bar so they can say they’ve done so. They take a photo there and wade back out holding their first drink. For the second and third they snap their fingers at the waiter, calling him Jose or Pablo without having asked him his name.
The restaurant is Italian, specializing in steaks from Omaha, Nebraska. She doesn’t eat steak but when she sees one half eaten on a stranger’s dirty plate she asks the waiter to put it in a bag for her. “It’s for the dogs,” she says. They’d call her crazy except that her Spanish is perfect and they know she’d overhear them.
She swims like a dolphin, like a shark, like an Olympiad. You find a piece of sea glass and picture where you’ll put on a shelf back home. She drives you through the barrio. She opens cans of food for the dogs with bad teeth or broken jaws. She coaxes a scared one over with the steak from yesterday. It takes the meat from her hand.
When the food runs out she drives you home. Not home, back to your hotel. You hate your swimsuit even when it’s not sandy and damp. Everyone around the pool is young and sculpted. By the third margarita they start to turn pink. By the fifth one, red.
But not you. You are a wrapped up steamy dumpling slathered in zinc staring at your feet in the most beautiful sea. You are alone on beach out of eyeshot of the pool, no dolphin, no shark, no Olympiad and thus too afraid to get into the water. The sand is cool enough to stand still where it’s wet so that’s where you stand, waves lapping your toes, taking in the magnificent view, wishing you were someplace else.
Don’t belong here.
This place is hard, but you aren’t. You drive with her through the barrio looking for dogs. She throws food along the sandy road for the ones too afraid to come near.
The sea perfect despite being named for a murderer. She swims through it like a dolphin, like a shark, like an Olympiad. You wade in water almost up to your waist, preoccupied looking for shells and stones to take back home with you. Everyone else sits by the pool, only getting in it to walk up to the so-called swim-up bar so they can say they’ve done so. They take a photo there and wade back out holding their first drink. For the second and third they snap their fingers at the waiter, calling him Jose or Pablo without having asked him his name.
The restaurant is Italian, specializing in steaks from Omaha, Nebraska. She doesn’t eat steak but when she sees one half eaten on a stranger’s dirty plate she asks the waiter to put it in a bag for her. “It’s for the dogs,” she says. They’d call her crazy except that her Spanish is perfect and they know she’d overhear them.
She swims like a dolphin, like a shark, like an Olympiad. You find a piece of sea glass and picture where you’ll put on a shelf back home. She drives you through the barrio. She opens cans of food for the dogs with bad teeth or broken jaws. She coaxes a scared one over with the steak from yesterday. It takes the meat from her hand.
When the food runs out she drives you home. Not home, back to your hotel. You hate your swimsuit even when it’s not sandy and damp. Everyone around the pool is young and sculpted. By the third margarita they start to turn pink. By the fifth one, red.
But not you. You are a wrapped up steamy dumpling slathered in zinc staring at your feet in the most beautiful sea. You are alone on beach out of eyeshot of the pool, no dolphin, no shark, no Olympiad and thus too afraid to get into the water. The sand is cool enough to stand still where it’s wet so that’s where you stand, waves lapping your toes, taking in the magnificent view, wishing you were someplace else.
Don’t belong here.
