A different day — an ocean pool — more forgetting — a smile that once would have fluttered a heart — no scalpels and luck holds firm

A Longette Lite by Jessica Perini

As I crest the hill I first glimpse the Great Pacific Ocean glittering — And a parking spot! 🤯 I’m in my luck. 

Stroll twenty steps to baths — Check in with my pass — Brave the naked ladies in changerooms
Only to find no cossie in bag, in hand — anywhere. Dang! Still — I’m in my luck.
Retrace steps back up hill — No cossie on road, on curbside — All the twenty steps back
to car —There! — Wedged between    Seat and door.
Try again. Should I rescan my pass? I smile at the man. No, he says, go through.
I smile a smile that maybe in my youth would have fluttered his heart. Still I am in my luck; through I go.

The ocean pool is a dishwasher — not figuratively — crabs lie dead —
Litteral-homeground creatures    Mortared-and-pestled by the slosh. Can I fare better?
I struggle with the snorkel. Practice my new and very uncomfortable
mouth breathing, Say, it’s ok panic brain: certain men have mouth breathed for millennia 😛
(not my partner — well-and-truly a nose breather). Still, I am in my luck.

I struggle to swim the machine manhandling me back. I fight the ocean’s will with old timers
and hippie parents who sing songs while their kids swallow and cough waves. 🤯
I am awash — and I so want to swim but the machine mucks and ducks me under. 
I surrender — drip to concrete to dry     while I am still in my luck.

Only the bravest remain. Yesterday a woman got swept to sea. In my imagining
she is still stuck on the island in the distance     counting waves. I cannot
salvage her, cannot soothe a world in crisis — stop wars or famine. So I focus
on small details: today, without my Sophia Loren sunglasses
and Italianate broad-brimmed hat I improvise sun protection; zero glamour — watching from my own towel cave waves pummel remaining swimmers set on their impossible quest. 

The surgeon this morning spared me the scalpel. Dyslexic sonographer swapped 14 with 41. 🙆‍♀️
I warm my bones in the hot drying sun and laugh at the sillyness   Of a sonographer, possibly
end-of-year pre-Christmas tired, swapping her numbers. And I sit here
and dry    towel-protected    still strong in my luck    while the old fogies dance in the wash.

[Image credit: Pexels Free Photos.]