The floorboards of the cafe's patio rattle. Heavy guy come in. His eyes bulge. He in his twenties, with beard and shorts and flip-flops. Froggy, he swallowed something to make his world foreign, to erase his immediate surroundings, to sculpt a dream. His hair a mop of Medusa. He whispers for our change. We chime "no". He then hovers about another woman who sits alone, smoking a cigarette. He is hopeful, humble. He waits for her sighing, shaking head. He leaves her to scoop up the plateful of potato chips some hurried customer left, chips the sparrows fought over ten minutes ago.

© 1990 - 2003 Katharina Woodworth