Crosses To Bear

I was raised to believe I was raised at the lustrous vertex of a congenial port city periodically trespassed by crushes of wheezy befuddled migrants still sopping from their slapdash easterly joyrides. The story goes that motley flotillas were swayed by Nueva Jersey's blushing sirens to bend with the trade winds and mango mingle in the dissipating crosscurrents until the unseemly psalms of the passengers' febrile motherlands tailgated freon gases into the ether. Preachers, principals, aunts, and the graybeard derelicts dueling at speed chess and dominoes naturalized these kinked-out processes to the extent that mind-forged historical curiosities such as triangular trade and Operation Bootstrap were plugged out of the grand pluralist equation. Our majestic city's cosmic pollination was deemed a true and living peephole into paradise's peacefully integrated capes n' colonials census tracts. The sloppy pudding proof of a divine diversity was said to flourish in the washy but jostling marketplace squares, the pageantry-swelled plumed transepts of Lent, and of course the butter pecan, sweet cider, brown sugar, cafe con leche, honey-dipped blended young ladies cursing us playfully through glossed-out pursed-lips for the cool romantic stretch of the Dia De Los Tres Reyes Magos parade route.