while waiting for our take out of dominican roast pork this afternoon, the strange man and i saw this woman, clutching her purse close to her heart, wiped out tears from her eyes. the counter girl asked her if everything was okey. she nodded, not saying a word. i muttered to the strange man, "now it is."
i wonder what it was before we knew about tears, how to use them to tide over our feelings.
walking back to my place, the strange man was silent. as i fished out my keys, i saw him, reflected in the glass door, about to say something. i turned around but he just smiled and said nothing.
we ate our food in silence. he, absorbed in the mets game on tv. i, with my afternoon stuff that passed for thought.
if someone asks me years from now anything that i could particularly remember while living in new york, it would be a day something like this. long afternoon, unmarred by any conversation. a silence, the kind you think will never end.
and then, that someone would ask me, "that's it?" and i'd nod. as if i had lived before we, chattering humans, have yet to find our voices and eons before we could invent language.
