Paradise - Kate Bueler

Paradise. What was paradise yesterday is not my paradise today. My paradise before was a beachfront property in a miami style vice house. My paradise was falling in love with bloody marys. It was the first time we took a run on the dance floor of drinking. I loved them so much- I took the orders from all the family members- first one then multiplying until one day I had more glasses lined up in a row, bartender I had become. I tried to perfect it each time. More family members kept coming back for more. My cousin’s husband said my final one rivaled zeitgeist. I took a moment of silence. A comparison to a the godfather of bloody mary makers. I only was in the ring for a week.

Paradise for me was waking up eating and coffee along the lake and then reading, swimming, and making a bloody mary for me and co. Then repeat again. And again. That was my paradise. Paradise was swimming in the lake so much it became my bath. I was a mermaid again on my back floating-my hair back and forth-the heaviness of the hair weighing me down and freeing me all at once. My childhood habit of being a mermaid still mine as I lay on my back floating and my head and the weight of it to and fro. It was my paradise to sit along the hot shore with a towel small or big and the waves crashing rhythmically as the screen doors opens and closes and opens and closes and opens and closes. I sat there by myself. I laid there and could have laid there forever sun beating on my irish german skin brown. I took off one of my 5 bikinis to see a tan line I hadn’t had in years. It was my paradise. Bloody marys and swimming and white bottoms and family and kids running around saying they are robots.

It was my paradise until I came home. Home to a forgotten feeling of despair and anxiety. And after I was able to shake the familiar feeling away. I found paradise again. Again I did. Today while driving. I left my friends home in the Richmond the fog melted away into the sun of the haight. As I drove, I saw two kids on their bikes on the corner bubbling with summer. I drove behind a person with a red party cup plastic type out the window. I slowed down. I saw a tall man walking a toddler across the street. Paradise again.

As I sat sitting in the sun no bloody mary but a espresso with spice. No beach but sun. And my companion the laptop. I sat and heard. Heard paradise again. I had saw paradise. But paradise was listening to three different people talk about boobs in unison. Paradise was talking to a man from cork. Paradise would be getting proper cocktails with friends and searching for sun tomorrow. I had left my paradise-my lake-my love but now I found home. Paradise all along. All long it was. I just had to drive to the sun and leave the fog. The fog that is.