Missing Jamaica…

Miss the bustling sidewalks and dusty streets……women sitting in floral rags on sidewalks calling out for peanuts and trinkets and fruit… their skin like leather……their voices traveling over the slight breeze rich with……scents of jerk chicken roasting on open roadside fire and ……fried fish cooking and peppers and ……the sweat of men with flowing dreadlocks swinging machetes like a dance to chop sugarcanes and coconuts……place in my outstretched hands and drink of the sweet water inside…….sweet like Guava and Papaya fruit the color of sunsets on mountaintops and oceansides…….the yellow so bright like the flowers the school children in little brown uniforms shower me with on bright white days……so many yellow flowers they bring with giggles and song I gather in my skirt, in my arms, some fall to the ground……yellow like acki and saltfish breakfast served on a terrance with ocean crashing and fried plaintain and dumpling and fresh mango juice.

 

I’m missing Jamaica, the reggae music pulsating through the busy streets, the patois, the open markets, walking through low hanging clouds on mountaintops, breathing it in, tasting it, trying to see my hands, the stares, the screams, the laughter. I miss the haunted glances, the toothless grins, the beautiful women, the strength of the men, the folklore, the stories, the desperate clutches, the weeping at twilight…running in the moonlight, running through fields, the broken spirits, the wandering minds…lost and wandering….a desert plane, and the whispers in my ear….drowned in a raging crowd, and the promises and the solace and the terror.

 

I am missing Jamaica. I left my heart there. What I would give to dance in a Jamaican sunset again.