This evening, I dined with Lori at an Ethiopian restaurant in the South End...
Eating with my fingers sweet potatoes, cabbage, chickpeas, lentils...my mind, just now, is not still.
My mind thinks of the food in front of us, then shifts to the conversations around us. To the eyes watching us. We fascinate the woman beside us. She stares, openly, intrigued. Lori doesn't notice, but I do. I want to smile to the woman who watches, but I'm shy. I want to say to her: she's beautiful, isn't she?
I want to ask the staring woman: our conversation peels in layers, doesn't it? Can you see her wounds? Can you see my holes? What are you thinking?
Her companion comes back from the bathroom and engages her away from us. It's no matter. What she was thinking, certainly, had more to do with her than us. A memory, a still in her life, a conversation to come, a friend left two corners down--we could have been the flint for any of these sparks...