At night, as I pass on the street.
A young man sits alone at a table for 4
facing the entrance to the Great Wall of China Buffet.
His dark hair has the loose curls of a mother's favorite son;
he is old enough to have grown into his body
but young enough for a fresh & open face.
His gaze is dropped to somewhere just below
the middle of the table--there, in front of his plate,
--his eyes softly unfocused.
I recognize in that look my 15-year-old-self trying not
to think about the boy for whom I wrote secret poems,
and the way he used to look at my best friend,
and smile.
Somewhere within his quiet place the young man
lifts a generous fork of noodles, leaning earnestly foward
in his seat to tuck the bite into his mouth. In this moment
I wish I were in a French movie so the audience
could see the sad boy who eagerly eats,
but even more,
I want to be able to remember how my own lover eats.
But he is a continent away, and a 4-month-old memory,
and I can't.
(Maybe this is prose, maybe it's poetry...
and like any good artist
I'm lying about something that really happened
in order to tell the truth.)