It was like coming to abruptly.
There I was on foreign soil
stung awake among the sun-blasted
stones of the local architecture,
beneath the washed out blues
of a scorched summer sky.
I’d been shuffling sickly along
inwardly trying to translate
a line born between
cups of porto and cachaca
the night before...
“ the real world worth of
single things done lovingly.”
A stinking, semi-toxic hangover sweat
was beginning to claim me
when two thickly shod women
in black cardigans passed
hauling heavy mesh bags
containing (presumably)
that evenings uncooked meal.
They stood starkly out against
the radiating bleached whiteness
of the sunlit stone structures
that insistent Iberian mid-morning.
The language of the
dominant immigrant populace
of my hometown tickled
my baked and pickled brains,
aroused my dulled awareness.
I managed to shyly mumble
“ Bom dia Senhoras”
bashfully bowing my hammered head.
It was a modest gesture.
They responded
with a gleeful stream
of partially understood
questions and comments
to which I semi-stuttered
“de vera, eu nao falo Portuguese.”
I smiled to recall a former lover who’d
chided me laughingly some years ago:
“You dig flirting with septagenarians!”
When the apparently inevitable invitation
to dine with their family arrived
I accepted and blushed to recall
how my very first crush
was for one Christina De Sousa,
my heart fluttering over a
Fisher-Price kindergarten
breakfast of plastic bacon and eggs.
Returning from the horrible habit
of daydreaming in company
I took a few healthy gulps
of fizzy bottled water,
relieved the women
of their burdening bags
and wondered whether
peixe-espada was on the menu.
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