Parkland, Florida (Revised)

In a town sinking
inches each year
back into the Everglades,
we spent summers plucking petals
from wild orchids, drinking
brackish water, testing luck
and trying hard to get lost
on roads we knew like old adages.

Loxahatchee Road was wild,
following the curve of a creek—
a streak of dirt that cut the county
clean in half. Once at the end of it,
eighty ounces of Olde English in,
we found a baby alligator tied by its neck
to the trunk of a Live Oak
with pink fishing line.

Ankle-deep in black water,
you cut it loose with your car key
in the light of headlights and a half-moon.
We watched the sawgrass
bend, strange curves and angles
as the gator swam free. The thin vein of
Loxahatchee was pulsating with no real
conviction to our left, and the glades spread
strange and flat everywhere else—
half a peninsula covered in damp carpet.
With quickly fading flushed cheeks, we were

two ghosts, stunned and disappearing
as daylight seeped slow over the brim
of marshland and
into puddles at our feet.