LOCAL OBSERVATION  / NIGHT BAT

BY CHRISTINA OXENBERG

It was mid-morning and I was invited out. Night bat that I am, I scarcely step outdoors before dusk and instead, especially now as the summer amplifies, I am committed to a nocturnal life and bow down to the polar blast of my a/c. But here was my friend Sunny texting, suggesting an adventure. Yes, I replied and searched for my bathing suit, eventually found with a seam of dust at the fold.

Sunny picked me up in a rumbly pickup truck with kayaks in the bed and we drove to her favorite secret spot. I could sooner reveal the coordinates to an active treasure site, so let’s just say we pushed off from a slash of green mangrove tangled shore.

I followed Sunny’s lead into the emerald water. All around were crystal rods of light and its play on the blue-green tiled seabed with its withering wavy baroque diamond shapes. I was hypnotized.

“Didja see that?” “I heard the splash!” This went on all afternoon but I missed every sighting.

We paddled in the kayaks and then dove in the water, tumbling and rolling. To swim hard in one direction and then shoot down to the coral bumpy ocean floor was paradise. On the beach we drip-dried, luxuriating in the sun’s coddling rays.

“Thanks Sunny,” I said. “I should really get out during the day more often.”

To the setting afternoon, Sunny returned me home. Feeling wobbly I took a shower which is when I felt my skin running off me in tiny balls. I looked down to see I was a flaking coconut cake. Tenderly, I patted myself with a towel and lay down in the path of the frosty a/c and passed the hell out for almost a week straight. My bathing suit will once more gather dust as I gratefully return to a nocturnal schedule, at least until the fall.

 

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