We sat across the table, she looking over her Caesar salad at me, and me looking over my scrambled eggs at her. We talked about, of all things, me.
There was a surreal quality to the background hum of other eaters-and-talkers and I watched as smoke curled around the etched glass-disk earth that served as a wall to stop my smoking habits from offending the puritans beside us. (Amusing. Just moments earlier we'd been discussing dead babies, and that complanate planet was no more sound proof than air tight - nor was it impervious to shocked or saddened or dirty looks.)
There was fear in my breast pocket, fear that I'd relinquish some tidbit of information that I'd, in retrospect, consider a secret. My mouth and heart often act without consulting my brain, and I struggled to keep the three parts working in unison. A more difficult task than I like to admit.
And then she asked.
She asked me when I'd begun writing poetry and I thought, what a crazy question. It would have been like me asking her when she started being female, or when her eyes became blue, or at what point exactly had she turned human. Writing is not something I do, but rather, what I am....
My mouth commenced to answering, true to form, without the benefit of my mind, for it was busy wandering, tonguing it's way through its own corrugations. And there it found a tidbit, a word or two once spoken by someone, another someone unbelievably interested in talking about, of all things, (what's up with these people?) me. It tasted like Rock and Roll, butterflied, and sauteed in burnt umber acrylic. It was like finding an errant red pepper flake in my Sesame Chicken, (Zhong's - menu item #3) unexpected, tearing at my eyes and catching my breath. It was the memory of the moment when I first believed that someday, someone might actually consider me a poet.
I wish that had been my answer. Damn mouth.
