Not
everything is in ruins.
But
most of the good stuff is gone.
One
morning I crank up my scrapped together go-kart and motor up the coast to a block of boutiques and cafes in a tourist town where even the always red horizon seems a bit dimmer.
I
stop into a sweet shop and and there isn't much left,
but I do find a Fun Dip under the cashier's drawer (which is still full of useless money).
I
lick the marshmallow flavored stick all covered with cherry sugar from its little paper packet, and damn if the last sweet thing on
earth doesn't taste just like it did when I was a girl, legs dangling in the water at the Yosemite Avenue Rec Center on a July afternoon in 1987, my eyes
still burning from chlorine as “Like a Virgin” played on
somebody's radio and was carried away on a hot breeze.