Seta’s Cafe

In Seta’s café on Belmont Street

the menus scorch our hands. Arriving

by trolley bus in a blue

shower of sparks, we left

our fellow passengers tired

of the grunt and grind of crawling

from Harvard Square to the suburbs—

the gaunt rumple of Mount Auburn

pimpled with thousands of headstones

grimacing as we passed. We order

mezze to munch while we talk.

Hummus, metch, yalanchi, stuffed

cabbage washed down with espresso

and trimmed with slabs of za’atar.

We should never leave this warmth

and street view, should recuse

or refine our lifelong quarrel

so we can work in the kitchen

together, washing dishes, chopping

vegetables, sleeping on the floor

after hours when the buses

have parked behind chain-link fence

and the commuters snore all spooned

against each other. You fear me,

though, fear my agnostic silence,

my subtle readings of Emerson,

my lust for expensive power tools,

my disbelief in photographs,

my nostalgia for the whiskey death

Dylan Thomas so deeply enjoyed.

The café hums with pride in itself.

The plate glass windows shiver

as another bus passes. Cups

and saucers rattle. Other patrons

grow intimate with each other,

but we lean back and order

spinach and cheese turnovers

to anchor us to conversation

shaped by duty rather than love.