hanging weekend

Ahhh, weekend in a hammock, swinging softly from side to side and hearing the waves crashing, the moon imperceptibly rising with its bald and honest glare, yes, you can hear it, you know it, we know it. A nearby little restaurant – the only one in this seaside town – was kind enough to deliver meals and beers, one of their staff members lives across the road. Behind us, Africa. Ahead of us, the poisoned sea riddled with plastics and emptied of all piscine life by hulking ships like the ghost ship tethered to the beach. This sea from which English, slaving ships, and gold miners came.

I read a most wonderful book and read parts of things I’d written, to my beloved. We sat tail to tail in our hammock two days over, or my head on his chest, or his head in my arms, or in our little high netted boat of bed. A simply stone-flagged bathroom with a tap that hangs from the whitewashed stone ceiling; that’s our shower. Nothing could be nicer, nothing was. And then the quiet drive back to town chasing racing red taillights, the crowd of people at intersections selling chocolate made from Ghanaian cocoa, children’s books, necklaces of steering wheel covers, brooches of soft packs of cotton buds or giant crowns of watermelon on a tray, like Carmen Miranda.