Tonight's Poet Corner: Salad Bar

Salad Bar
by Belinda Roddie

We met beside the wilting spinach and
artificial crab meat, sucking in the stale
smells around the lunch trays and the
party balloons suspended on glass.
I put down my plate of romaine and
served you cool ranch, while you offered the
orange chipotle bottle you had squeezed
firmly against your right hand.

We didn't talk much, and certainly not about
the leafy green. But we did talk green. Green
Washingtons, green envies, green stalks of
past hope sprinkled by a garden hose in the
very, very dead of July. You sat down beside me,
at a table pushed into the precarious corner,
where the family of six belched out protein
and oils a booth away. And we
ate salad. And it was okay.