Choices

and she is sitting comfortably

despite her awkwardness

having told me her secrets

having bared herself to me

having let me know her so intimately

_____

for showing no remorse

_____

and yet

here she sits staring

into the eyes of her lover

afterwards

supping egg drop soup

from a plastic spoon

in mid-town, Chinatown,

across the street

____

where

in the emptiness

of our own desperation

we shared

our fortunes

_____

and the waiter brings us chopsticks

souvenirs

while protesters march

across the street

angrily contesting

the rights

of those less

fortunate

as we once were

before we discovered

our own agonizing answers

to that same antagonizing question

that I impudently had chalked up to memory

before I understood

what the lack of bleeding

meant

_____

and as tea is poured

into the fragile china cup

blood spills

across the forehead

of a woman in the crowd

who fights her way through

the filthy streets

just beyond our window

_____

and we can see her gently weeping

as she pushes her way

through

the masses

their vulgar signs screaming

God-fearing

contraindications

as the self-righteous hordes hide themselves

in churchgoer clothing and protest

as if

They

___

as if they could begin

to understand

choosing

between

her life and

___

across the splintered table

I reach for

a trembling hand

that retracts

and recoils

incensed

that my contemptible act

of comfort

could

somehow

make up for

_____

a month’s indecision

_____

and slowly she wipes

her hands clean

as she weeps

into her soup

somehow degraded

that her life

outweighed

_____

and she smiles

falsely

knowing

I can see through her

_____

as we stare through Plexiglas

to avoid acknowledging

the topic

_____

and from behind

the restaurant's curtains

we can see a woman waiting

clutching curtains

behind which

she hides

her slender stomach

_____

and we sit and fill our bellies

with chicken and rice

and crumple our paper napkins into our plates

and ooze out of our seats

and out the front door

as the waiter brings

the wrong change

to our table

_____

Copyright © 04/15/2024 by Christy Munson. All rights reserved.