Koko – roooo – zaa Koooo – ko – rozzzaaa KO – KOOOOO – RRRO – ZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA My head rests against Baldwin’s, against Giovanni’s, all of us sweltering in the Mediterranean sand at midday. They’re in the sea. My brother searching salps, my mother worrying. I’m half tipsy from her Sheridans coffee liqueur, the July Vogue at my feet and a brown leather watch harboured around my wrist— darkening body plastered against one of the resort’s white chaise longues. I listen to Charlotte Cardin and at first think only of us: Mami, David, me. Of her leopard print dress fluttering on the shore, the flawless recipe behind her famous salam de biscuiţi, the plaited rope of the octopus fairy lights above her terrace. I think of my temporarily tanned skin (Choco last summer; Uomo this time), and my brother’s permanent tan, his scalp-tight braids and the easiness with which he dispenses that eternal smile of his. How we smell of the Hammam Tesori because none of us liked di Loto. But then others start breaking through: my cousin casting love spells in her attic room. The colour of my grandmother’s hair before it greyed, the same as her mother’s before she died. I think of my aunt’s mahogany table holding the foamy cappuccino she makes for me every morning at eleven. And the chestnut hue of the journal my father got me. The fading maroon of my uncle’s bear cave amulet—mine, since fourteen. The cigar between my grandfather’s just-as-thick fingers; my stepdad’s russet Ray-Bans and sepia sandals. I think of the street vendor selling his lightly salted corn on the cob three rows away. I think of how they all buy me dark chocolate when I come home because even at twenty, I’m still their cocoa baby. I think of anything but you.
Flavius Covaci
our cocoa baby