We drank Sex on the Beaches, and imagined
our honeymoon in Fiji. Or Tahiti. Bora-Bora, it
didn’t matter. It was hot. There was crystal clear,
yet aquamarine water under our over-water
bungalows. There were drinks, but no hangovers.
There were pineapples; I never had liked them,
but they melted in my mouth like M&M’s.
We pooled together on the silky, silty sand,
beach of an imagined Euphrates burgeoning life
in our newfound matrimonial snow globe.
We denied our apartment, small, filled with
things we didn’t need, yet hung onto like
a speeding car’s oh-shit handles on offramps.
We denied our existence of school for three more years,
of menial labor, of car payments and electric bills.
Of charcoal filtered vodka and Natty Ice.
Of generic canned corn and flour tortillas.
And it was wonderful. No grit scraping our backs,
no curious voyeurs, no creepy images
of our memories on the internet for the world to see.
We drank in our tiny, overheated one bedroom
until the horizon line disappeared and all we could see
was the TV playing our favorite, familiar movies,
and the mattress ever so comfortable as our room AC
whirred its heart out and fluoride-rich water dripped
from the toothpaste-spotted bathroom faucet.
our honeymoon in Fiji. Or Tahiti. Bora-Bora, it
didn’t matter. It was hot. There was crystal clear,
yet aquamarine water under our over-water
bungalows. There were drinks, but no hangovers.
There were pineapples; I never had liked them,
but they melted in my mouth like M&M’s.
We pooled together on the silky, silty sand,
beach of an imagined Euphrates burgeoning life
in our newfound matrimonial snow globe.
We denied our apartment, small, filled with
things we didn’t need, yet hung onto like
a speeding car’s oh-shit handles on offramps.
We denied our existence of school for three more years,
of menial labor, of car payments and electric bills.
Of charcoal filtered vodka and Natty Ice.
Of generic canned corn and flour tortillas.
And it was wonderful. No grit scraping our backs,
no curious voyeurs, no creepy images
of our memories on the internet for the world to see.
We drank in our tiny, overheated one bedroom
until the horizon line disappeared and all we could see
was the TV playing our favorite, familiar movies,
and the mattress ever so comfortable as our room AC
whirred its heart out and fluoride-rich water dripped
from the toothpaste-spotted bathroom faucet.
Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer and photographer living in San Diego. His writing has recently appeared in Meridian, The Southern Review, Fence, Rosebud, Atlanta Review & Texas Review among others. He publishes a writing prompt blog Notebooking Daily and is the editor of the journal Coastal Shelf.