Obstructed Eavesdropping
at an Outdoor Cafe
by Jennifer Arin.

Oh, to be a seat!

One man hooked into a backpack with a broken strap sits, says to a busboy, "You know Harry Potter? I write that kind of stuff. Monsters. Scary monsters." They talk about ... what? The wind twines their words around.

The man finishes drinking from a cup, gets up, and replaced by a blonde and her phone. She tells someone, "The Dutch are bastards. They analyze you a long time before knowing if they want to be your friend and -"

A bus's backfire and rackety brakes muffle her cultural summary, and soon a blue-suited woman in silver hoops, and her red-capped companion take the table abandoned by the blonde. The man wonders, "Why am I in San Francisco? I should live in --" Curse the men in the street who start to drill when, more important still, other things could use repair.

To be closer .. To be a chair!

To let people throw their coats over my back, place in me their full and varied weights as they spill and wipe drops of grenadine from my arms. Messy or not, I long to be there, though knowing how often humans talk the same talk - the love or breakup story, the boss who isn't fair - perhaps I would get bored. Perhaps I wouldn't care, after all, to be a chair.