in parentheses

She has a pretty face, and she wears her hat backwards far back, soft brunette streams down the sides of her face, a pesky strand pushed back as she counts money, she smiles a good bye and says hello, an order and more money she counts and returns three dimes to a smiling man, she smiles bye and looks down to her friend bent over cleaning a spill, her hat’s bill low over her pimpled forehead, she turns away then and looks across the quiet wild of the noontide crowd: a vietnamese couple who laugh in ironies native to their tongue alone, a bushy redhead wintry and small leaning in for the whisp of a secret from her spanish lover auburn in sun, a girl alone eyes to the passing world the yellow sun the cobalt sky the passengers going nowhere, the self-conscious professor making himself look professorial on the off side of the cafe reading the same newspaper he has read three times since dawn, to the mural on the wall of a ray of birds bursting through autumn ports, and to the cliché-hangers the artists and the vagabonds to the poets and writers, all self-proclaimed geniuses, in the corner where two windows meet, to the pretty little maggie who sneezes and reads who sneezes her rednose again and wipes herself again with a twisted white napkin and reads more, and to the swede and her blond lying in the grass, and to the turks grizzled and smokey and communist in a murder of cigarettes, she smiles hello to an old man and hands him his coffee and throws a belated goodbye, pretty pink smile moves back into a sigh, pretty pale skin moves back into a sleep, pretty promise seen always after goodbye.

With all her smiles gone she settles into a last panning stare before she says goodbye, over all the people and the millions of miles they bring with them and the millions of miles still infant in their hearts, and through the tens and twenties, in a sliver of sight, she sees a boy, dark and darkly clothed dark and darkly sitting dark and darkly poised, they share a time, and then he bends down into a blank page