Incendiary

the papaya salad is incendiary in this nondescript thai restaurant. my voice is surprisingly frail as i blabber on about the unwelcome wind and rain. the guy is himself, taciturn. when i think about it now, our times together, which this could well be the last, are mostly about lots of food consumed lumpenly between the polarity of my loquacity and his reticence. i don’t know why but looking at him demolish his crispy duck salad, i am reminded, of all things, by a yiddish story about a cow too timid to produce milk. then, this hyperkinetic, reedy server appeared again with her beaker of cold water swaddled up to its neck with white cloth still crisp from a recent ironing.