in summer the heat rises off the street to choke me in waves of melting tar and gardenia to make sure i never forget florida.
one year we returned from vacation to find our pool full of frog's eggs. we collected them with our cupped hands and put them in a trash can filled with water but when they all began to sprout legs, they all died en masse. it was beautiful in a way; an amphibious suicide pact that we weren't in on. we dumped the water and their bodies in the grass by the hibiscus bushes at the fence's corner and i have never stopped feeling their presence with me.
my neighbor's brother heard that lizards could grow their tails back, so he cut off their iguana's with a pair of kitchen scissors. it died. pets were always dying in their house; the disposable hamsters would find their way into pool filters again and again, all chlorine bloat and matted fur, as if they knew if they had tails, they would go the same way as iggy.
when our friend moved to a new development, his house was the first one on what was mostly orange groves. we'd climb the barbed fence and run through the sand and trees collecting shotgun shells. there was a burned through car that was tangled with vines in front of a shack that none of us dared to go past. it was unspoken that we would trespass, but not that much. one day, we heard a shot ring out in the grove and we didn't come back.
the day we left florida, we piled in my mom's white cadillac and headed north. with my face pressed against the glass i thought "i can be anyone now," but it wasn't true. i would always be the snakes that got in the laundry room, the sand under the topsoil, the school hurricane drill, and the section of walmart that is dedicated to disney merchandise. i can't forget that.