Josephine’s Sweet 16

By the time we got to Josephine’s Sweet 16 there were cheese
      doodle fingers everywhere.

Phat Phil was already deep into his fake Pachanga.
Skinicky, Angel & Dre set up a snap shop by the cake tiers.

Josephine’s eyes were lit like strobes & glitter, her silver dress
      hardly fit her, & because Angel was still tripping, he saw
      sequin in everything: quinine in the ice cream, a fork &
      spoon standoff; he even saw his fate in a rack of plastic
      champagne glasses, bubbles big as balloons released into
      the sky all at once. C’mon, bro, you can’t mess with a man
      who’s wearing a tuxedo, he said.

Cubes of cheddar & guayaba sat like Zen masters on the spheres
      of Ritz Crackers.

Josephine graced her gold-plated throne. Her reinvention was
      imminent.

Put on your cake face, Angel said.

What we thought we heard Skinicky say was, If Sekhmet created
       the desert with a breath, then Shorty Bon Bon split the
       Atlantic to death.

Party over here, party over there, and this rite you get to take
      with you.

The grown-ups spent most of their free time in the bathroom,
      and whenever the DJ played El Gran Combo, we all sighed
      & dipped to the staircase to make out, roll up, or add up.

Little Joe, Josephine’s uncle, tried to call us out on our
      stagnancy– undisciplined knuckleheads, he’d say; and, as
      a way of offering evidence, he’d point to Phat Phil, & there
      was Phat Phil crashing into the VIP table. Almost made
      Josephine’s abuelita spill her rum until abuelita threw him
      a lifesaving turn, and spun Phat Phil back into his sea.

There’s that moment right when the flashbulb flashed on
      Josephine’s smile, where your sense of lottery & random
      tries to reason with you, and, yet, there’s just enough
      chance to survive more than one fresh hell and emerge
      without taking shorts.