Pastel's of Miami

“Jack Frost done lost his mind!” Starts the video for Will Smith’s, Welcome to Miami. Though I’ve traveled some, I’ve never gone down to be elevated by turquoise seas and happy palms where South Beach is bringin’ the heat!

I was once married to a probation and parole officer whose ticket was free for some sort of cop’s convention at some Holiday Inn Miami. As a souvenir he’d brought me some shells he’d found strolling the slow, sizzling beaches--light peach and fair pinks. The grit still clinging to these really caught my attention because they were such large pieces compared to our powdery-fine, diamond-shining west coast sands.

And Puerto Rican influences come to my mind more than the Cuban did. Oh, I think I’d like to drink a coquito on some lively family’s backyard patio furniture, legs burning to the black, wrought iron, hearing stories of the old country and then going to a dance after sunset. A music scene that would force my hips in new ways! We’d make the trip in an antique convertible, on our way, passing vibrantly painted art-deco buildings and blushing plastic flamingos lining pools!

Oh, and Don Johnson and his vice squad and perhaps that’s why the parole peeps were so keen on having their convention there? They might shed the blue and black, wear baby hues of powdered pink, bleached blue and sunny yellow, short-sleeved, and arms free, to breath, umbrella’s in their drinks?

Photo credit: Vicko Mozara/unsplash