Spring Break 2017

*This piece was originally written for a poetry class I took as an undergraduate. It was fun to revisit it and put it through some edits.*

The girls had red-penned through calendar squares, felling January…February…the first half of March. Then the car was filled with suitcase-stuffing, the windows and sunroof left open—gaping mouths exhaling laughter, coughing on hair-left-down. Mist filigreeing around rows-and-rows of pine tree trunks had them squealing over Flo Rida beats, whooping when hotel silhouettes building-blocked up on the horizon. They hefted baggage—should’ve bought a new bikini should’ve invested in a spray tan should’ve lost a pound or two three four—to the room, deposited suitcases on beds covered in palm-fronds fossilized in fabric. And, finally, they shucked their flip-flop manacles, sprinting out barefooted to the storm-wet sand, stopping as the seafoam bubbled against their toes. Before them, a pelican plunged into sifting surf and emerged, pouch expanded and trembling.