Happy Birthday, M. - let's stay in Miami

We spent the evening lounging around oversized black and white chess pieces, cushioned loungers with furry blankets, bright candelabras on whitewashed tables standing in the middle of a blue lit pool, while sipping our drinks and munching on guacamole on blue corn chips. The evening before had been M.'s unbirthday birthday dinner, so we had spent our energies devouring a whole bottle of Rjoja and a Cuban fish dish under a tree glittering with fairy lights coiled around its huge skinny branches. Lunch earlier that day had been savoured while reading the newspapers at a sun-lit wooden table on the white sand, surrounded by trees with heart-shaped foliage and cabanas with thin muslin curtains draped around them. And our first evening here we spent it under the dark sky, whispering to each other through the sea breeze on a broad sofa in a courtyard lit with starry candle lamps, drunkenly giggling at others who were lying down on a four poster iron bed in the middle of the flowery stone floor. We could make out Orion's belt in the navy blue heavens then, just as we could tonight.

During the day, we showed off our handstands in the pool and attempted cartwheels on the crushed shell sand, stepping away from broken pink coral and dried brown seaweed. And all this time, the sun shone through high clouds as the blue green sea tugged and pulled at the winding stretch of beach.