waiting for the afternoon downpour to let up, a friend and i ran into a bar nearest our bus stop. after each ordering the happy hour special, we saw this young girl nursing herself to a tall stein of untouched beer. in the cave light of the bar, we could clearly see tears smearing her cheeks. we drank our cocktails in deferential silence.
halfway through my drink, the girl, in an unflattering t-shirt printed with happy cows grazing, got up and ambled to the ladies' room. i joked to my friend that as a good samaritan, i should leave the lady a note, say, a line from sara teasdale's advice to a girl: "no one worth possessing can be quite possessed."
"you don't know what she's sad about," my friend said. i nodded and that was that.
on her way back, the girl looked neither young, nor angry. she looked-and the first words that came to me were-ripe and relieved.
i imagined her sitting, still skirted, on the dingy bathroom bowl before she went back to the bar. then like a birthing cow, the great weight of her woe heaved out of her. and then instead of licking at the wet thing on floor, this messy thing she had long tried to possess inside her, she just looked at it wobbling at first, then limping, and finally trotting away from her.
