An old man sat on a plastic chair on his patio, drinking sweet, black coffee. He was thinking about the same skinny, barefoot girl. They ran around together when he was eighteen. He hadn’t seen her in years – ever since her family moved to the capital. But hardly a week went by where he hadn’t thought of her. He looked at his pitaya plant, perched high atop the cinder block wall surrounding the patio. Through the sunlight, he could see it bore a lot of ripe fruit. Forty years ago, a bat shit up there, and the plant grew. The old man had been eating the purple fruit for half his life. He got his wooden ladder and machete and climbed up to cut down the fruit. His wife yelled. “What are you doing, old man? Are you crazy! You’re not twenty, you know. At your age, there’s a hundred ways you can die every day.” He climbed down and gave her the fruit. “Here you go, my love. Make me some juice. Would you, please?” He went back to his seat. His coffee was still hot. His grandson was drawing with chalk on the patio floor. He could hear his wife – in the kitchen – singing some song about flores y pájaros. This was the old man’s life now; however, occasionally his life returned to the memories of a skinny, barefoot girl. He was sure she had shoes. But she never wore them when he kissed her. He was still eighteen at heart. •
