Blessed Life
Knives.
Good knives, really.
I'd never heard of garbanzo bean soup,
but he'd left some for his girlfriend back home.
Do you really think of yourself as a surrealist? I asked.
No, he blew out.
On that air, I blew my own: or did you say no
because of how I asked it,
and if someone else had asked,
Would you have said, shit, yes,
and he said, that's too complicated, and what is this knife for?
It was a small knife,
a paring knife with an inward curve
on the back end as if for a thumb.
I told him I didn't know, but we both admired
its beauty and utility,
though it was clear neither of us
fully understood it.
I opened some cheese and used the tip to tip it
out onto a white triangular plate,
and then to slip a crescent off
and onto a cracker and handed it to him.
Good cheese, he said.
Neither of us smiled.
In the other room a party was going on
neither of us wanted to join. Instead, we waited
for the doves (beating, beating) that always enter
a room if you wait long enough,
the things waiting to be said:
I don't like where I live.
I miss my sons.
I can't leave because the money's too good.
We're all going to die. Which made us laugh.
Which is when we let our bones fall to the floor with us around them,
and pat the new dog, stroking her long ears,
the fur that seems like something
we lost and can't ever get back,
let our hands touch once in a while
and mumble in our separate languages
sure we're being understood.
