Majase

You said your name was Rita with a "d" and let me blunder my way through you. You said I had charm (and finesse was for amateurs) I liked how you were a ladder, how you could speak in any accent you wanted; you liked when I did not change the sheets or tie my hair back, You had dropped out of art school in Alabama where your father still thought you were a virgin, and I was bussing tables on St. Charles. We lived all that summer in one room and a kitchen. You would fry plantains and we would wash them down with purple haze, watching the musicians silhouette their souls against the sky. On weekends you would tell f