Return to Key West

Return to Key West

Sitting there in the terminal she could be the woman who was his wife, only four years ago the last time they vacationed together, the girls both over 21 coming with their puppy eyes saying we never go on family trips anymore. Watching her now any third party would agree she is lovely, why would any man leave such a woman, or why would such a woman no longer want such a man, or whichever version you want. Now the one inside gets up, and through the suddenly opening gate encounters the other also searching so long. A third universe takes the quantum leap into being around this same body, a place as vast and generous as a historic house kept open to the public, like Hemingway’s place from the thirties with the forty cats and the old urinal from Sloppy Joe’s he brought home one night that his vengeful wife turned into a fountain, and now sixty years after her and fifty after him we talk about their marriage like they live here.