My Dad

I found his Merchant Marine cap in the closet today. It’s always been with me through storms, dead calm, confusion. He was more than anyone could ask for and then some. He made my Mother the happiest woman alive, which would have been enough, but he loved me, too. He became my Dad when he married Mom. I was 18 and had a son of my own, but I was his daughter.

I knew this man since I was two. He, his wife and son lived across the street. He was so big – a gargantuan 6’4” 250lb. former football player. To me he was always larger than life. He had a powder blue 1957 Thunderbird in his driveway, a built-in swimming pool in his back yard and air conditioning in his house. These were rarities in our 1959 New Jersey suburban neighborhood.

We all wound up there from various cities. We were from Newark and he was from New York although he was born and raised in Superior, Wisconsin. That would become fodder for many jokes after he and Mom married.

I remember him teaching me how to throw M80s into his pool. Not today’s version of a legal firework, but the ones that contained roughly 2,916 milligrams of a pyrotechnic explosive. I swung my five-year-old arm back with this hissing, burning mini-bomb in my hand and dropped it on his foot. In one fell swoop, he jumped up, grabbed me and jumped into the pool just as the explosion sent the leg of a redwood deck chair soaring over the fence.

His son was the same age as my big brother and they played baseball at the bottom of the hill where Saw Mill Drive and Arden Court met. They would let me play outfield once in a while with my tiny glove.

This larger-than-life man cried like a child when my brother was killed in a horrific auto accident at 17.

Oh, yeah, he was an alcoholic. He wasn’t a mean-spirited, abusive alcoholic. His alcoholic antics kept us laughing for years. One Christmas he decided to decorate his roof with sparkling garland and lights in the spirit of the season. I came home from grammar school and asked my Mom, “What does N-E-O-L spell?” She corrected my “error” with the proper spelling of “NOEL”.  I replied that, “well, Mr. Peil has N-E-O-L on his entire roof.” His response to our outbursts of laughter was to leave it as is and laugh it off with the rest of us.

I often think of that time, and the fact that we were in the flight path of Newark Airport, so hundreds of passengers were treated to our inside joke.

We never let him forget it. Every Christmas he knew it was coming, and yet took it in stride.

So many changes took place over the years; it’s hard to recall the details. Mom was never a good judge of a man’s character. Two divorces and a relationship with a real loser were her claim to fame. She fell for the romance every single time. She even lugged the loser to a long-distance relationship with her when we moved to Florida in 1973.

Sometime around 1976, she got a phone call from New Jersey and a dinner request from the now-widowered Duane Peil. She hesitated. I bluntly scolded her, “After all the shitty decisions you have made in your life, you’re going to let this golden opportunity just pass you by? And you’re going to continue with this idiot off-again-on-again what’s-in-it-for-me horse’s ass? Go! It’s dinner with an old friend. GO!”

The story goes that he asked her to marry him that night and promised her “she would never be beholden to anyone – ever.” She agreed within 10 seconds.

And I got my Dad at 18. My son got a grandfather. My mother got the love she so richly deserved.

He profoundly changed all our lives. He encouraged me to join the Merchant Marine when I was turned down by the Air Force for being too short. He even set up an interview at the Great Lakes Maritime Academy. He told me, “If you can sail the Great Lakes in November there is absolutely nothing the ocean can throw at you that you won’t be able to handle.”

“Great Lakes? As in icebergs on Lake Superior in August? You do realize I am a Floridian. I don’t even own socks, Dad,” I said.

“Oh, you want to join the warm water Merchant Marine and sail the Caribbean?”

His words, as always came back to haunt me when I sailed my 50-foot ketch through a tropical storm on my way to the Bahamas. My foul weather gear was filled with puke and pee when I reached my destination. The whip lines holding me to the wheel also burned my hands. And when I tried my best to sail through the Mona Passage as splinters and various boat flotsam floated past me in the treacherous eddies that claimed more lives than any other slice of ocean.

“If you can sail the Great Lakes in November…” I thought. It had to be tough if this is the soft Caribbean. I still can’t shake the thought.

But, I had his cap with me.

Mom stood with him through a hospitalization and recovery for alcoholism.

She was mortified when she came home one day and found us both drunk on beer while fishing on the lake behind their house.

She became absolutely livid when we came home from an all night party boat fishing trip and never made it into the house. I think he and the captain downed enough vodka to fill a bucket. I was not to be without sin, I confess. The last thing I remembered was piloting the party boat and all of the passengers through Baker’s Haulover and hitting one of the two docks I was trying to focus on while my Dad and the captain sang sea shanties sitting on the deck of the wheelhouse. Unfortunately I hit the imaginary dock. Dad warned me that, “you have to close one eye. That’s how I made it home from the Herald-Tribune every night. When I went through the tunnel, I kept one eye closed so I would see only one center line.” His wisdom never ceased to amaze me.

It took Mom no time at all to get him into another program. It worked. And many years of sober laughter ensued. Although he played bartender to Mom’s occasional drink, he never went beyond black coffee.

And he shared my passion for cooking. A great thing since my Mom cooked only when she had to and cut so many corners the outcome would sometimes be… well… not so appetizing. He loved to grocery shop, too. Another thing Mom detested.

He once asked me what I wanted for my birthday supper and I flippantly told him I would love lobster thermidor. I arrived early to find several very large, very live Maine lobsters crawling around the kitchen floor. “I wanted them to enjoy a little freedom before I cook them,” he quipped. I replied that I was really glad I didn’t request steak. Mom would have flipped to find a steer and a chainsaw in the kitchen!

He adopted me when I was 27. It was shortly after I had an aneurism and Mom had a lung removed. Cancer. She quit smoking the day she was admitted for surgery. Dad didn’t. She drank and he smoked…the perfect combination.

He was a printer and pressman by trade, even though he was really, really colorblind. He left newspapers and books behind and took a job printing phone books using hot lead type. My son and I would visit him at the shop off Bird Road in Miami. He would let my son cast his name and use different inks to print it.

He retired, sort of. He bought an industrial blade sharpener and set up shop in his garage sharpening press blades. I would love to sit there and soak up the scent of hot oils, black coffee and Chesterfields while listening to talk radio.

He would tell me stories of being in the Merchant Marine during WWII running supplies through enemy blockades and getting shot at all the time. It bothered him that he wasn’t considered a veteran even though he sailed in every theatre of battle. I wrote to the Department of Defense and still have the letter they sent thanking him for his service. Unfortunately it was before the Merchant Marine fell under the Coast Guard so my Dad was not considered a veteran.

He was so proud that I graduated college and became a journalist. He subscribed to every paper I

worked with even when I became a city editor and rarely wrote a word. He gave me my first pica pole and scaling wheel. He even taught me the formula for cropping and scaling art knowing I sucked at math.

His relationship with his son was difficult. I never asked questions. We did get into a screaming match when Dad was battling cancer. The prognosis was not good and I chided my stepbrother, now my half-brother that he needed to spend some time with Dad. He accused me of trying to muscle in on his “inheritance”. I made it perfectly clear that what he and Mom had belonged to them. The only thing I wanted was the Merchant Marine cap that had traveled the world.

I hated my half-brother that day. He had such a wonderful father all his life. I had not been so fortunate. Estranged from my birth father since the last drunken beating in my teens – the one that had me cleaning up my own blood from the walls and floor - I had no desire to even hear his name. He never even met my son and seemed not to care. My Dad deserved so much more from his flesh and blood. Could this be the same person who played baseball with my brother? The same quiet kid across the street? I knew I would never see him again when Dad died and I tried to make peace with his decision to not speak with me again.

Mom, Dad, my husband Vern and I would go out to dinner for our anniversaries. Their anniversary was Sept. 26 and our anniversary was Halloween Oct. 31. We got married in their living room. Not a word was spoken about the cavernous age difference between us. Vern was 54 when we married, I was 23. Vern was one year younger than my mother. It took her a while to get over that fact. But my Dad always welcomed him with a booming, “Hello, son!”

One anniversary dinner date something went terribly wrong. Dad was having a hard time swallowing. The air hung heavy around us as we feared the worst, but no one dared to utter a word. Dad thought this was a cold he couldn’t shake. It turned out to be inoperable esophageal cancer. I think he had quit smoking a year before, but I can’t recall. His doctor cut to the chase, “All those years of alcohol and cigarettes have taken a toll on you.”

I was home when I heard the news. I slammed the door, went to the deck behind my house, punched the fence until my hands bled and threw a tantrum that could make a two-year-old proud. I calmed down enough to grab my cigarettes and a bottle of spiced rum and sat on the deck until I could breathe. My hands were bloodied and sore, but my heart was broken. It was January and it was cold and I wanted to just die.

I loved him. He taught me so much. The most important lesson being that I did not ever have to be a victim to any man – relative or not.

What followed still haunts me. Doctors promised him “new” treatments that “could” extend his life. Too many trips to hospitals and too many surgeries ensued. Feeding tube in, another tumor out all the while he was laughing. Mom brought him home from a chemo treatment one day and she got out of the car screaming for me. I rushed to the drive to find my Dad catatonic covered in vomit, urine and feces. Somehow, we got him in the house, cleaned up and on the couch. I held his hand. It was much thinner than I remembered.

A rush of anger washed over me and I ran out of the house to my truck with the intent of killing the doctor. All I could do when I got there was scream like a crazy woman, threaten him and grab all of my Dad’s files on the “experimental” treatment. He called the police. I was long gone when they arrived, but they did track me down. All the officers had to do was look in my red, swollen eyes and tear streaked face to know there was no punishment worse than what I was going through.

Watching his body deteriorate was excruciating not only for adults, but also for my 15-year-old son. He came to me one day and said, “Ma, I just can’s go see Grandpa anymore. It hurts too badly. Will he be mad at me?” Reassuringly I explained that we all understood how he felt and there was nothing in the world he could do that would ever make his grandpa angry.

Sometime after a first non-barbecue Labor Day, Dad told me he had had enough and wanted Hospice care. Mom tried to talk him out of his decision, saying it was “too soon.” He was persistent. And he prevailed.

What followed was a litany of actions. Hospital bed set up off the master bedroom in his office, people coming and going, Dad telling a priest that he wanted to go wherever Mom was going or he wouldn’t go. His brothers and sisters came to visit. He stopped eating. A man who loved food so much couldn’t eat. Sad, sad irony.

On one visit, he pulled me aside and asked for a vodka and tonic. I obliged. Mom was angry. I reminded her that he was not going to be here for long and if he wanted a drink, I would give him a drink. She was the one who withheld his pain meds because she was afraid he would become addicted. I intervened. I told his nurse. Mom lost again. It seemed she had very little control over this situation and it was wearing thin.

I visited every weekend and several times a week until, in November, Mom asked me to stay. I moved in. I sat with him and told him how much he meant to me and thanked him for everything he ever did for me. I could hear his stories of the sea, places he had been, and things he had seen. He slipped into a coma.

I stared at the lake. I recalled all the times we got into trouble together. We always were in trouble. We put my son on Dad’s Jet Ski when he was five, gave him a few instructions and set him free. Mom went ballistic. I could hear her yelling, “Duane, Denise is Wayne out on that thing alone?” We looked at each other and both answered in harmony, “No! Of course not!”

We were fishing for bass one day and one jumped on the dock. “We didn’t catch that one, Dad.” That glance said it all. I picked it up and threw it in the bucket.

One night his breathing just stopped. And the man I called my Dad was gone. He had withered to 120 pounds.

“My Dad is gone.” I cried to my husband. I don’t know how to not have a Dad.

It was the fourth major loss in my life and the most profound at the time. Even after 34 years, the hole in my heart still burns. And every time I visit a large port, I watch the harbor pilot being escorted on the harbor pilot’s tug to a tanker, cargo or cruise ship. I imagine the pilot relieving the captain and taking control to guide the ship through the channel and to safe harbor.

“Great Lakes Maritime Academy,” I think. If I had listened to him I would be that harbor pilot. And I would be able to take anything the ocean could throw at me.

©DD Corbitt

The Kiss

           It wasn’t just a kiss. It was so very much more. It was an energy that began somewhere deep inside my body and electrified every inch making the hair on my arms stand up and notice. That kiss. I didn’t want it to begin. I wanted to savor the breath of someone’s lips so close, but not touching. Waiting in sweet anticipation for that moment by which all moments would be defined from this point forward.

            Nothing could – or should – be this exciting.

            Fear, longing, desire burning every inch of my being and bringing me almost to my knees. My head was enveloped in endorphin heaven. I was sure that, if I opened my eyes, I would only see the bright white light on the other side. This is supposed to happen to someone half my age. This isn’t supposed to happen to me.

            And then it happened. Softly teasing at first. Let’s stop and feel this for a long savoring moment in time. Everything was teetering on the edge of collapse like a building in that split second before implosion. The button had been pushed. The detonation began. Yet, the doomed monolithic structure had not yet begun to fall in a crescendo of rock and debris with its beams buckling beneath.

            Like my knees.

            His eyes were blue. No. More than blue. They were the skies and the seas that looked beyond me into my soul. I was powerless against this force of nature. No seawall in the world is strong enough to contain this.

            And then the building began to crumple under the weight of passion. Standing in the early morning sweet Miami sun. We were on the edge of the bay with that intoxicating cocktail of warm, humid, sweet and salty air. All of it designed to fuel the fire in my soul. So warm, soft and irresistible.

            I succumbed to the desire and with much abandon fell into the depth of that kiss allowing his mouth to press against mine. All hell broke loose after that. Thought ceased, time stood still and the building tumbled hopelessly to the ground. I wanted this moment to never end.

© DD Corbitt

            

The Chamois

The Chamois

There it was tucked neatly behind the milk and the orange juice. A plastic tube containing the most important item a young man could possibly own. A damp piece of split lambskin made expressly to stroke a deserving vehicle to a streak-free dry. Wrung out and preserved in plastic wrap and so gently placed in its protective tube stashed on the refrigerator so it didn’t spoil, dry out or suffer the indignity of the wash cycle and its harsh chemicals.

And here it was in my hands. In the quiet of the house that once rang with banter.

“Ma, please don’t take this out of the fridge or it’ll go bad. I spent a lot of money on it.” “I won’t touch it.”

“Can I wash the truck now?”

“Of course.”

“Where is the carnauba wax I bought?”

“It’s probably in the garage on the shelf.”

“Thanks.”

That first itch of a teenaged boy to explore the roads all alone behind the wheel of his very own vehicle is worse than Chicken Pox and poison ivy mixed in a fiberglass bucket and dumped over him. He can’t scratch that itch enough and must learn to live with it.

And so it goes in every American household. It was the sacred rite of passage to real responsibility.

But, this responsibility came from the heart. The truck, an older model Chevy S-10 pickup truck was a gift. An inheritance from his beloved grandfather that reminded us every day of one man’s love and generosity and a grandson’s love and admiration to the man who gave him the best gift of all – freedom.

With his grandparent’s lakefront home a memory, he held precious memories of laughter. His grandmother moved closer to us and he showered affection on her. He took her out to dinner in the Keys and she kept a souvenir postcard on her refrigerator until the house was sold.

The first real living, breathing machine in the driveway. The young man’s ticket to the future and out of a place nicknamed “Deadstead.” The ride to college in a faraway state with a bed filled with childhood memories of rocking chairs, footlockers, guitars and amplifiers. Tons of clothes, sheets, towels and money earned filled it to the brim.

Off to a foreign landscape filled with deciduous trees, snow, mountains and adventures. He picked up a motorcycle along the way and kept it tucked safely in front of his truck in the parking lot of the apartment he shared with three other young men on the verge of adulthood.

And every trip back home the chamois was waiting on the top shelf of the refrigerator. The truck sat waiting patiently in the familiar driveway for a loving warm-weather bath to remove the salt and slushy dirt residue from mountain roads.

Then every parent’s nightmare jarred his stepfather and me awake. In a barely audible voice between sobs tinged with anger and disbelief he screamed that there was an accident. I could hear the wail of his truck alarm in the background.

“Are you alright, Son?”

“Yes. But, Grandpa’s truck!”

“What happened?”

“Some idiot came racing down the road, lost control and wound up in the parking lot! He totaled Grandpa’s truck AND my motorcycle!”

“As long as you’re not hurt…”

And my heart began beating again. He learned a quick lesson on being grown up. Insurance claims, shopping for a new vehicle, fixing a motorcycle and saying goodbye to the precious memory of Grandpa’s truck. Things changed rapidly for the young man. College, work, friends, love.

Still the chamois stood vigil in its airtight container at a constant cool temperature. Waiting.

The trips home were lively. Spring break was an adventure with friends who had never seen palm trees and two oceans. The familiarity of family and friends and food were comforting in a strange way. And, the obvious signs of aging parents and grandparents still among the living were somewhat unnerving.

Holidays became festive with the introduction of a new member…a wife. We shared the traditional foods he was raised on and it was wonderful. These times became more meaningful because of the distance and time between visits. Our family had lost so many since he was born. The circle of life continued without a great-grandmother and a grandfather, but the promise of new family made our hearts soar.

Still trips to college graduations and a wedding followed that summer and we all rejoiced.

The happiness one becomes so comfortable with changes on a dime. His stepfather had never regained his health following Hurricane Andrew and he underwent another quadruple bypass. He was in full congestive heart failure when the young man made a summer trip to visit. In the months that followed, health and laughter returned until a tinge of autumn filled the tropical air. A short trip to the hospital soon escalated to a transfer to ICU where my beloved husband died with me by his side.

Oh the phone calls. My Mother was there for me and helped me through the numbness of a loss so sudden.

The young man and his wife came down for the funeral and were great comfort for a wife and mother who were about to lose so much more. But, the chamois kept vigil – a silent sentinel to days gone by.

Three months later, the young man lost his uncle – his father’s brother. He had been there for boats, fishing, motorcycle rides and everything he shared with his dad. Luckily we all stayed close while he was growing up.

My Mother and I drove up for the funeral and were reunited with my child’s other family. I remember the sadness in my ex mother-in-law’s face. I had seen it before in my mother’s face when she lost a child. There is no greater pain than losing a child. It is not natural. Children are supposed to outlive parents.

So much transpired in the following two weeks with the culmination of a grandmother’s angry words, “The next time you see me, I’ll be in a box!” I chided her for the remark that she repeated to my sister. Just let it roll. Mom’s favorite saying was, after all “This, too, shall pass.”

But, it didn’t. Her call came at 1:00 am. “I need help. Something is wrong.”

“I’ll call 911 is that OK?”

“Yes. I’ll unlock the door.”

“I’m on my way.”

I pulled up at the same time as the EMT truck. The door was open, the dog was waiting and Mom was curled up in my Dad’s favorite chair…unresponsive.

I watched them lay her on the floor and try to bring her back to consciousness. I called my sister at 2:00 am. I needed someone. I had no one else. She died three days later on my Dad’s birthday. Her funeral was the day before Easter.

We lost everyone on or about Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and January birthdays. This was new. I called her grandson when his grandmother passed and pleaded with him to come down. I know the airline was starting to disbelieve all his emergency flights, but so were we.

The chamois stood in the refrigerator, although it had been long forgotten on by now. The boy never came home to use it.

My sister and I tried to put together an Easter supper, but the Grandson and his wife had other plans and quickly left.

One more rapid-fire death touched us as our beloved neighbor – my son’s second (or third) father suddenly died. He came down for this passing, too. And later that year his stepmother lost her battle with cancer. Now the family ties were almost completely severed.

He revisited his home once more when the house was for sale and his childhood belongings needed to be boxed and transported to his home.

And so I stood in an empty house. The echoes of my breathing only intensified the memories in each corner. Echoes of laughter and tears of pets and people long gone reverberate from silent walls. And I went to the refrigerator and removed the last item: a chamois in a plastic container bought so many years ago.

I left the keys on the counter, tossed the chamois in the trash and carried it out to the curb with the hollow sound of the garage door closing behind me. I found it painfully amusing – almost funny how a piece of split lamb’s skin could witness the passage of time and the end of grand dreams. Nothing turns out the way it should.

Now I hear occasionally from the man I call my son. Most often when he is driving somewhere, hardly ever when he is home. I can’t remember the last time I opened a Christmas card like the funny ones he’d send for a chuckle. Sometimes growing up is harder on parents than children.

I wonder if he remembers the chamois. I wonder is he thinks of us when he sits down to supper with his new family. And, I really wonder when he outgrew his own family and the shattered dreams he left behind.

©DD Corbitt

Publix commercial - Pat Metheny's "Last Train Home"

It was the 1980s and nothing could ever make us unhappy. We were whole - a family and we celebrated as if the world would never end...at least not for us. Our family was invincible. But, over the horizon lurked a bandit of time and we went down, one by one. Illness, death, growing up, leaving home, natural disasters...tempered by the strength we drew from on another until there were two at Christmas dinner. The last one I would spend with my mother, And then there were none.

I ached, I cried, I tried in vain to start over, but peace never found a new place in my heart.

Every year I hope it will be my last. I am tired and I want to go home with the rest og my loved ones.

My only solace is that one day I will take the Last Train Home and I will be at peace again. With those I love most.

It was a time of love

It was a time when there was love everywhere. When tables overflowed with cheer and children snuggled up for comfort and warmth. Love permeated everything we did and followed us everywhere we went.

It reverberated through music, it gathered around us whenever we were all together and we all carried pieces home with us in photos and leftover dinners.

While now to lament love lost, I try to revel in Love's memories. Past lives, past embraces and the constant tug at heartstrings when looking back brings a smile or a warmth from within.

Oh, to be a keeper of time and a vessel of all that once was good! We eat the fruit of the past and sustain our lives with its sweet nectar. Awash in the softness of a kiss and embraced in the weightlessness of a hug.

Oh, come back, sweet life! I have missed you. Let it be, my mind says, for it will never return except in dreams. But, I know better. I know that once was will come again and beak me from my earthly bonds. And love will find its way home once more.

© DD Corbitt

Just a rest before I go

I need a rest before I go. It gets so difficult to breathe sometimes. I don't want to be in this time, place or body. I want to sleep. Sunlight hurts. Sounds hurt. My heart hurts. I feel the emptiness of loss and don't know if I can face another long season of ghosts.
   It will start again soon. The noise and the crowds and the dates. I have accumulated numbers in my head that all have to do with loss. They chime in my head as a never ending reminder of each chunk taken from my soul. I thought by now they would have been replaced.
   Can it really be that the years have passed so quickly that the wounds are still gaping? How I long for the ability to go outside and feel, with great abandon, the breeze upon my skin again. I don't want it to hurt anymore. I want to be whole again.
   I want to stop hearing the swoosh and hum of an oxygen generator reverberating in my ears marking the continuation of time like the silent sand in an hourglass. It tolls not for me, but yet it does. It slowly marks the passage of time until...
   I am alone again.
   I just want to rest. For a minute or two. Under the banyan tree safe from the sun and hiding in myself. I am invisible.
   I am safe. For a minute or two...or a lifetime.

© DD Corbitt

The Island in my Mind

Sometimes it's so hard to deal with changes. I can walk the streets I trod long ago and shake my head at what it has become. It's loud, it's crowded, it's paved and repaved.

So much is missing. No shrimp boats, no houseboats, no place to camp on the beach. Everything has a steep price and there isn't any character left. Just avoid it and go home and safeguard the memories.

And then, by happenstance, I find myself riding the familiar roads to a destination I loathe. It's not easy to get lost on this road. It is easy to get swallowed in memories - good and bad. From the redesigned and repaved road to Alabama Jacks. The memory of Alice's crab cakes (which she gave me the recipe to so many years ago). The bridge over the Sound and into the mangroves that give way to the bustle of traffic that is Key Largo.

Soon to pass my old home on the water in Tavernier and places I worked and lived. Fought off demons and found resolve. But it's a little farther down this ocean highway I can really feel the tug of sweet nostalgia pulling me South. The bridges get longer. I remember the old ones that have long ago surrendered to time, neglect and the elements.

And the water. Blue on my left and green on my right. Deep ocean out there. Shallow gulf over here. The stench of low tide slips over the senses like an old, wet blanket. Fish and Sargasso and mangrove gas and wet lobster traps.

The traffic thins for a while and the sights become once again familiar. Motels that refused to change and fewer roadside circus attractions. Small town America on the tip of the continent. And it all happens again.

The traffic, the noise, the changed scenery and the road constriction that has not ended in 10 or more years. Fighting cars for a space to lead my steel steed to rest. It has been a long, hot trip. But there it is...

A small street with small gingerbread houses carefully preserved and lovingly restored. It's a nice place to stop. And all the odors of the highway are replaced by honeysuckle and jasmine. A rooming house on the edge of the world and a garden in which to rest. The sun plays on the deck of a small pool of warm water.

Out there the streets are choked with tourists and locals trying to make a living in a place they can't afford to live anymore. Some of it is familiar and some of it is just plain scary. But here I am insulated. And I can hear the voices of ghosts that linger and hover over old haunts. Go out and play, my friends and I will be right here.

It's a small slice of what paradise used to be. I'll stay right here. My soul needs to soak up old Key West.

© DD Corbitt