by Ingrid Wendt

The first time ever I heard your six-note chatter from deep 

           inside my palm-thatched roof, no more than five minutes past

                        lights-out, ping went the strings of attraction. No night passed 

            without your bedtime serenade, and when at last we met—your tiny feet

spread wide on the bathroom ceiling, your tender skin nearly translucent (between 

            your oversized eyes and mine, invisible lightning)—I finally grasped

                        the measure of your devotion: not a bug to be seen, you were shielding

            my skin from irritation, as you also do outside, under the naked bulb that attracts

even more of them, as does Maribel’s bulb, next door, though why Maribel had fifteen

            of you one evening, when I came to call, I cannot fathom. 

                        But that same night at bedtime, as if this were an elegant, grand

            hotel, centered on my pillow, instead of a candy kiss, your greeting:

a small, black grain of rice with a tiny, white hat. Look at that, I preened,

            and went to my desk to write it down. And when the sun again splashed 

                        the eastern horizon, there, on my desk, the second! Of all the umpteen,

            randomly scattered pages, you’d chosen “Yucatán Gecko.”  Who needs

fifteen suitors competing? Eat your heart out, Maribel. My Yucatán gecko has sass.       

   

“Ode to My Yucatán Gecko” appears in Issue 55/56 of Third Coast, forthcoming Spring 2026

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