we're not gonna do it alone

On Sunday I visit my sister May, who is nearly my age and just about my height. To us, we are the funniest people alive. We feed off each other in spirals of laughter, so much funny, all the funny. Oh, look, I can't explain why we crack us up so hard. It's like telling someone about your dream from the night before. Our hilarity takes the form of stupid Boris-and-Natasha Russian accents that we get stuck using, unable to give them up for hours on end. Dumb jokes - what's red and bad for your teeth? A brick. What's brown and sticky? A stick.

The pinnacle of comedy.

We're both Well Known Figures in the bars and restaurants of this town. May's a server, with god-like abilities to run a brunch or calm an angry customer. She can guard her crew from bad management or her employer from a hungover staff's hooliganism. As a teenager she was hit by a car; it broke her life and sent it down unexpected paths. The ripples of pain still expand from that moment, but you would never know to watch her glide through a dining room, soothing and urging by turns.

The 9 to 5 is largely unknown to us, and if we want to hang out on the regular we have to make a point of it, so we've made Sunday our day. I got her and her husband and their roommate hooked on Steven Universe, the gayest musical science fiction cartoon ever made, and we've spent weeks catching up on episodes. We eat snacks, we sing the theme song, we discuss the motivations of fictional characters from space. We remember how good it is to be us and how lucky we truly are.

kneeling in the sand

The Wacissa River is short and broad and stays around 70 degrees all year. On my knees among the fish and snails, up to my chin in water and feeling the heat leech out of my body like poison, leaving me cool and healthy and heavy lidded. I touch my niece with cold hands and she gasps and shivers and giggles, perfect Florida baby. I wrestle my nephews and drag them in circles, kicking up a wake, kissing their heads and ears and faces when they dive at me for a tussle.

By the time I drag myself out and wring out my shirt, sunlight's no longer an assault but a comfort. Warm like my sister's smiles as we wrangle her kids. Warm like a dry towel. The whole world is realigned, any irritations nibbled away by the minnows. A poor man in paradise.