The hotel pool is quiet this morning except for the gardener watering the plants, two girls conducting a photo shoot by the water, giving the illusion they’re about to swim when they’re really just going to take staged pictures for social media, and the colossal hum of more air conditioning fans than I could fathom. The heat has clung to me with an unconditional love I am starting to find suffocating, and I’ve unintentionally sat opposite the rising sun. It wavers in and out of the clouds, bouncing off the surface of the blue-tiled pool, stabbing my tired eyes with the same persistent quality as the humidity. There is a mozzie bite on the back of one of my arms which I keep reaching to scratch, and once I have hacked at it, I remember I shouldn’t indulge in such fleeting niceties and then stop. Perfectly spaced palm trees line the third-story pool perimeter, and just beyond that is a wild entanglement of vines and leaves bigger than my femur, capturing the true essence of this once-jungle swamp land. Half of the greenery here is considered a ‘house plant’ back home, but they put to shame our sad little fiddle leaf figs, slow to grow in the summer, halting to a standstill in the winter. As time continues to tick forward, the air smells sweeter and sweeter, kitchens starting to pump out the endless array of food, a wildly mind-boggling amount. I didn’t sleep a great deal; I went to bed with a tension in my stomach I can only describe as familiar anxiety about familiar topics, but sitting here, watching a line of ants traipse the perfectly coloured grout to somewhere, reminds me that everything is ok.
A perfectly standard morning to transition into my next year of life.
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