It’s nice to meet you.
I mean, it's nice to see you again.
And we know each other, she and I. For years now.
Flustered, no doubt, she holds her unhappy baby, a weepy infant, making a fuss.
She’s having a moment.
Aren’t we all, I ask? It’s all I can muster.
I reach, touching that chubby arm gently—careful not to pinch.
I extend a hand to her friend, too, a smiling, animated blonde, her name I don’t recall.
In this everyday play, I perform staged the way most are, pages written, shred, and written again. Some anguished soul, languishing between verbs, adverbs, and pronouns, bled it, penned it. Industrious little bees erected the set. Everyone in this cackling ensemble acts out, some from the gut, others faking it. The purple-skinned young woman next to me at the bar is a case in point.
She masters small talk with the self-conscious bartender, and I can’t avoid a syllable of it, her elocution razor sharp. The weather is nice. Ketchup, please. How long have you worked here?
Who wrote those wilted words? Is she improvising?
Me? I simply sit. A prop, a potted plant, an extra, no lines in sight.
To be fair, I’m not much for acting or oration or blathering, conscious or comatose.
I did hear a lovely baby crying, though, through the boisterous din.
At last, evocative, sumptuous, genuine prose, written.
Life, noise, living.