Amarillo seeps through green blinds
By Shaleena Brooke
Amarillo seeps through green blinds and leaves a calming sort of in-between. Turkey feathers sit in an old glass Coca-Cola bottle beside her coal-colored cowboy boots. Books fall messy on a chair, with silk bandanas draped across any free arm. The flowered, far-too-feminine purpled sheets fit uneasy on her bed but, poco a poco, become her --
Just like the awful haircut, and the ants crawling cross the wall each day at dusk, and the too-small, packed-full wardrobe, and the craving for just un poquito de tinto at two.
It all becomes her. Old self and new environment melt in the heat of the Colombian swamp --
Old country blues blend with new-age vallenato, fútbol slips off the tongue as easy as soccer, and the undercurrents of the Magdalena reflect the messy waves of a stateside lake during springtime storms.
Reaching beyond coexistence, they re-collide till an icy spectacle forms from the ricochet--melting and freezing at incalculable moments --
But it could have been that taste of something strange but sweet--of boli or zapote or bocadillo. Or it could have been when that Spanish word captured something her English couldn’t. Or when her saludos to strangers became abrazos para amigos.
Maybe it was the accumulation of all those new flavors, words, and people.
Or maybe it was the first time she fell in love since that last time. Or maybe it was the heartbreak that followed.
Old self and new environment melt in the heat of the Colombian swamp. And it all becomes her --
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