the meal

“It’s true what they say about us. When we were boys, we tried to smoke everything we could get our hands on. We grew up in the countryside, so imagine—tea leaves, hay, corn husks from the field…once I rolled a fake cigarette with a page I had torn out of the bible, I was so curious, maybe even a little desperate," said Guillaume.

They were all laughing at this. Lily, sitting inside the Café Charbon on the Lower East Side, felt strangely enough like the immigrant at the table. It had been nearly five years since she had returned to New York City, and fifteen years since she had moved out of the country at the age of eight with her family. Coming back was like trying to remember how to swim or skip—you never quite pick it up again the way they say you're supposed to. When the beautiful waitress had come by with her pen and notepad, everyone had ordered in French. Perhaps a joke had been made about the wine selection, the year or the region, who knows. “Mademoiselle?” the waitress had turned to face her. Afraid of making a mistake, Lily had chosen the easiest thing she knew how to pronounce on the menu: "I'll have the steak frites. Thanks."

“The American accent can be so charming, really. It would go straight to a man’s heart if you were in France and walked up to him and asked a question.” Guillaume reached across the table and patted Lily’s hand amicably with his bear-like palms. “Now repeat after me, 'Pardonnez moi monsieur, dans quelle direction est le musée?'."

"Pardonnez moi monsieur, dans quelle direction est le musée?"

"Ah, you see. Straight to my heart."

Lily blushed only slightly, and then smiled at Antoine sitting next to her whom she had been dating for some time now. Guillaume was an old friend of his visiting the city. She had heard this name mentioned several times before in conversations about Antoine’s hometown, and then college life in the south of France. Guillaume turned out to be a short and plump man with a deep, infectious laugh. He wore a mustard color turtleneck which Lily thought was a rather peculiar choice, and yet not entirely unpleasing. His girlfriend, Lucie, was petite and smooth like a madeleine cookie you could dip in your coffee. Lily found it hard not to stare at her perfect face; the carefully painted red lips which would remain magically unaltered throughout the course of the entire meal.

It is always interesting to learn how one's lover grew up with his childhood friend in a foreign country, and yet tonight, Lily felt like Robinson Crusoe, not the original rendition but the one described in Bishop's poem, who had escaped his island only to return to a different one back home. "Home-made, home-made," she thought as the others chattered about her. In the ocean of silence that ensued after Antoine got up to use the bathroom, Lily asked, "And what were the girls like?" She felt bolder. Or perhaps it was the third glass of Côtes du Rhône which she was now unconsciously gripping with two hands like a child afraid to spill a bowl of milk.

“Complicated!” said Guillaume, throwing his hands up in the air. “Sophisticated, but fucking complicated. Now American girls are much less so…” He winked at Lily, and she remembered the first time Antoine had done the same to her, and she had not been able to tell if he was patronizing her or simply expressing goodwill; later she thought it was maybe just a way for him to remain silent without seeming aloof.

Lily was about to interject to clarify which she was less so of, sophisticated or complicated, when Lucie jumped in before she could and the conversation picked up life again. When they had first arrived at the restaurant, Lily had tried to lean forward to kiss Lucie on the cheek, startling the poor woman who had apparently been expecting an old-fashioned American handshake and stepped backwards instead. This in turn had made Lily feel somewhat like a lost baby elephant that had wandered out of the zoo.

Antoine returned to the table, and Lily realized she had already lost the thread of the debate which had been going on for a good few minutes. Pausing for a moment to switch back to French, Antoine chimed in with a detail that could only be expressed in his native tongue. Lily wanted to throw her hands up in the air as well. She smiled when the other three laughed at the punch line and asked, “So is it true that the two of you used to act in plays at school?”

“Yes, it was improvisational theater. Antoine here is the funniest guy I know. His impersonations are priceless,” said Guillaume.

Lily rearranged her face to hide her disappointment at having not discovered this coveted fact on her own. She thought of the one time in college when she had finally noticed the tiny white scar above a boyfriend's lip, and had been embarrassed by the fact that it had taken her so long to see something she'd kissed at least a hundred times before. “Oh-la-la,” she replied, putting her glass down a little too hastily so that it threatened to tip over but didn't, “What types of impersonations?” she asked.

oolia

"age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety"

-shakespeare; antony and cleopatra

roommates

They had dinner in the small apartment they shared, instant mac and cheese from a box and a bottle of wine, sat with their feet propped up on the table, heels kicked off and little runs in their stockings, lighting up a cigarette for dessert while the neighbors pumped reggaeton through the walls and a few blocks away the JMZ rattled across Williamsburg Bridge which burned like a blue-gold flame in the lingering dusk, drinking, smoking, spilling ash on the printed scarf that served as a makeshift tablecloth, getting up every now and then to see what a passing siren was for, the lights of a police car flashing in an instant before disappearing around the corner, talking over the incessant BOOM-BOOM-BOOM of the music and the electric hum of so many television sets turned on, talking work and overtime, anal retentive bosses and verbally abusive clients, the ridiculously jacked up price of the Unlimited Ride and another sick person on the train who required medical attention, the San José copper-gold mine caved in two months earlier with 33 Chilean miners trapped 700 meters below ground and what it was like to be without sunlight for so long, books each were currently reading, the healthcare bill, Libby’s old high school classmate who recently posted a wedding album on Facebook, the receptionist at Edie’s office whose husband was going back for his second or third tour in Iraq. Libby said her mother sounded increasingly neurotic over the phone these days but insisted that everything back home was just peachy, never offered to visit Libby in New York City, never asked if Libby was making new friends, though she had encouraged her to move there straight out of college. Edie said the only kind of family visit that interested her were the nonexistent ones. Free meals at nice restaurants are a plus, said Libby, and Edie had to agree, spending the next five minutes describing at length what she would order at Peter Lugers should the opportunity ever arise. They continued talking over the noise, each glad to have someone to bitch with after a long day in the city, and though they never said it out loud—a sister where none had been expected. Edie, finishing up the dishes under the flickering fluorescent light of the kitchen, looked out the window and caught sight of the fingernail moon, thought she could survive the unflinching dark after all, maybe even until morning.

ode to steamed eggs

(After Kevin Young's "Ode to Boudin")

You are the sun in my mouth.
Three golden yolks swimming
at the bottom of the bowl. When I pierce
the clear sacs, the unborn flow
out rich and viscous, their beauty beaten
slowly apart and then released into the ether.
You are a cloud that absorbs whatever
I put inside you: rough scallions,
velvet skin of mushroom, pink and white fans
of kamaboko thinly sliced, sweet crunchy
corn from the earth. But I like you best
when you are pure light. Pale yellow silk, river
of cream and chicken broth, diaphanous
protein. You are the reason I know that food
can be air, rising from within, lifting the soul
like homemade wings. You fed me the day
my grandpa set sail on a sea of paper lotuses
inked with words from a different language.
Soon hands will release him into the fire,
then ash and bones---chalk white dust lighter
than even you. For now, the soft sponge
of memory travels inside me, cutting me loose
like a hot air balloon, or a lantern consumed by
itself in the night, then pause, then silence.
You fold over me like music, regret having
not spoken, not seen, my grandpa gone,
or grief, or both. The prelude to Bach's
cello suite plays in the background,
as we look up and watch photos---
an entire life, small, yearning---flash

across the projection screen, beneath
a constellation of orchids.