Late Night Café: A Bite-Size Fish Story

6/22/2021

I like nights like that. You ring around so many topics in one conversation that you work up a thin appetite and find your feet moving towards the kitchen to a shallow bowl with balahoo fish soaking in seasoning, fish caught by two brothers in Dominica, whose sisters you've known your whole life in

Sint Maarten but didn't even know that their parents were Carib. They even built the boat. You gnaw on the crunchy fried-dry fish (sticks) and mushy plantain, mixing the stories your mother is telling you and the falsities of the history book. The one that made the Caribs the villan, the outsiders. You marvel at the way your people gnaw on a three letter word and force additional symbols into it as if skinning up their eyes at the bigger fish they couldn't afford, gar. (C) 2021