I remember the still warm night

And the taste of the Atlantic coast

Between my toes.

We had been walking on

That narrow crowded street

With lemon drop lights

And brightly died skirts hanging off hooks

In the door ways.

The ice-cream shop

(Squeezed between a candy store

and a post office)

was filled with buckets of edible color.

(But the only color that I wanted was

the strip of flowery pink in that wispy blue sky

painted by no other than Monet himself.)

I settled for caramel, though.

Light brown, sweet and creamy.

It's taste was pasted to the roof of my mouth for the

Rest of the evening. It was better than a postcard,

More personal, my own little souvenir of that July.