Port-au-Prince, I'm Thinking of You!

Yves Lafortune It's eight o'clock in the evening. I walk, lost among the Christmas trees twinkling on the streets of Florida, in the cold nickel of limousines gliding like mirages on the asphalt. Nostalgia grips my throat. A "Joyeux Noël" from Bossa Combo suddenly returns to me, like a warm breeze that has crossed the ocean. Let's sing this Christmas chorus together; it's the celebration of our liberator, the celebration of a country that sings even when everything around it burns. But here, the potatoes don't taste the same. Here, I die a little all day long, and I die silently all night long, outwardly full of light, inwardly full of country. Port-au-Prince,
you haunt me. You return in every street lamp, in every breath of wind, in every music that remotely resembles ours. And in the midst of this overly bright Florida, it is still your shadow that walks with me. Port-au-Prince, tonnè boule m! Yves Lafortune, Miami