Part Five: One Love

Jamaica is a nation full of rhythm: you can hear it in the slow vowels of the accent or if watch the heavy way they throw their hips from side to side when they walk. I admire it; I creep around stubbing my toes and rounding my shoulders. Here at the resort they understand that we are all one peoples and the staff are friendly. Perhaps too friendly… Whatever you think I think it too, whatever you feel I feel it too is what the beach attendant said to me. He crouched by my sun bed and talked about how he can read the sun like a book. He told me my (German) eyes matched my bikini. I was (had been) alone on the beach and had been enjoying reading in the sun, trying to ignore the brisk wind that rippled over my skin and down the Breezes beach.

I want to show you something, he said reaching towards his waistband. I panicked: I had only that lunchtime (after a half eaten lunch at the RastaCafé and seconds from the buffet) walked with A over the boundary of the prude side into the nude side and we had seen the guest lounging in all their glory like seals in sun. So I worried I was about to get a little nude all of my own. Instead he pulled his phone from his boxers and showed me a poem he had written. Much of it repeated what he had been saying to me; it was a scattering of words and thoughts with no real thread of single thought. It was very expressive, I told him.

I lay back down and watched a john-crow spread its fingers and soar across the sky. I have many names today, none of which I chose: baby, princess, hi there honey, and each time I saw brilliant white teeth smiling at me and I smiled back. The hardest ship I ever sailed was a relationship, I had read in the poem, and I think I might claim I am already sailing.