Someplace You Always Told Us About
Part of the 2020 Liturgical Calendar Storywriting Project.
A Lent Story.
In my heart you are in a place you always told us about. You’re on the beach in Waikiki, or in a restaurant with no walls in Key West.
It’s warm there, and while you tell me about the food and the drinks and the music you’ve heard that would just blow my mind, I’m staring at the brilliantly colored birds that have found a home in the rafters. No one else seems to worry about them, so I leave them be.
The nights are long here. Songs ring through the air from every building, all melding together, never clashing.
You’ve had a drink ready for me. It’s made with the good kind of Rum that they only serve to the locals and the regulars, the kind in the plain bottle they keep under the till so no one asks any questions.
There’s food too, and I eat it unquestioningly. If you say it’s good, it’s good, and of course, it is.
In my heart your mother and father are there, though they’ve already turned in for the night. Your aunts and uncles too.
The sun is low, barely bobbing above the surf at the horizon.
You start to tell me a story, about a concert as always, and I take a sip of the drink.
My mind fills with the Natchez Trace, and GI Joes and the sound of an engine, and I am here and you are not.
You are someplace you always told us about.
© Phil Lofton, 2020, all rights reserved. Republished with permission from porchlightcollective.com
