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.