We return to the Grand Pacific Hotel
in Suva, Fiji, but it is not the way it
was or what we thought it was:
the cold lobster almost as big as
a pork roast in the garden by the Pacific,
the moon floating on the waves as
yellow as mango then you and Brian
off to see the cava ceremony For Men
Only, while I remained and read Camus,
and now we stoop arthritically to pick
the fallen frangipani blossoms at the
rusting front gate and put a honey-
fragrant bud behind each other’s ear
the way we did then. No one has entered
or exited the open-air opulent lobby
which I can see is still tiled in big black
and white checkerboard squares like
Leslie’s café on Facebook Café World,
but you say, I want to go inside, so,
frangipani still behind your ear, you go
while I wait by the fragrant tree beside
our white Hertz Toyota. Quicker than
a tropical fish darting for food, you return
and I see that you are blushing. A young
Fijian man made a pass at me, you say,
horrified. We laugh as I ask, Was he cute?
***
Photo by Vijeshwar Datt on Unsplash
