By Adriana Beltrano
When you get off the river
the teenage attendants will be listening to Freebird and drinking Diet Faygo.
Your hair will perm up like your mother had it in P.T. school.
Long and curly,
long and leggy,
pale in the Florida sun,
an alien woman of the plains
playing Duran Duran on a wonky cassette.
Had Faygo been invented yet?
Your mother always liked Coke, anyways.
The tattoo on an old woman’s upper arm
will move only for you.
It will flex in the sun
with the overgrown scrapyard of the rest of her body.
The tattoo has faded
into the blush and varicose veins that smatter the old woman’s arm.
She was on the river too,
ass hanging into the water through her tube,
wrinkled neck thrown back in ecstasy in the sun,
short hair sprawled over the inflated plastic.
If it rains,
the mulch will be dyed redwood.
It will stink of petrichor.
Smoke will rise into the air
from the encampment in the forest.
You’ll revel in burning wood on the water
as the hidden figures make do.
If you’re lucky, a dragonfly will land on your knee.
If you’re luckier, one will land on your lover, and you’ll be together forever.
You could see a black-shelled turtle,
but the water can be too cold for such-blooded creatures.
Back from the river,
the lover will fall asleep.
You will pretend you too are asleep,
and you will keep your dead-fish-dead-weight arm
slung across their torso.
Allow yourself to cup the loose flesh of their belly
no matter how damp with sweat the intersection of thick wrist and soft gut becomes.
A message for the Pisces:
we are organic creatures; nothing promises us a soul.
Adriana Beltrano (she/they) is a student majoring in English and political science at the University of Florida. When she’s not writing, you can find her crocheting or going on walks through Florida’s swamps. Her work has appeared in Giallo Lit, Color Tag, Jamais Vu Zine, and more. You can find them on Twitter @asbeltrano and on Instagram @adrianabeltrano
