Your sister gets engaged at Condado Beach.
You and I– when it happens– are in the middle
of another meal, paper boats of combo soft/hard-
shell concoctions at Condado Tacos, and when she calls
us later, at The Abbey, we joke I should have proposed
before Mark did tonight, when I stuffed-mouth called it!
that they would get engaged in Puerto Rico, that I should
have wrapped your ring finger in tortilla and professed
my love, of course, in a dramatic drunken offering at the
corner of a bar, of which we have done a thousand times,
but not here, to do it first, with nostalgia borne from
our presence at a small chain founded in the city
our story began. But when we lived in Columbus
we were lukewarm upon Condado’s now-sacred
offerings until it felt like homesickness brought
deus ex machina and a Condado was constructed
a couple blocks away in Lawrenceville. There,
our lust for long-ago brought us back and again.
We feasted through soft and lean times and almost
threw white flags of surrender at each other. This
time, at the bottom of our split-check receipts, we
saw an opportunity to join their rewards program.
This is how we sign our own lifetime commitment.

(originally published in Winamop, Winter 2020)