Poetry by Richard Fein

THE SOUR AFTERTASTE OF DINNER

My lover asked in a whisper if the couple at the next table
were soul mates or just two souls sitting side by side.
The woman wore a wedding ring so they already had fallen in love,
but did they keep falling until they fell out of love?
They hid behind their menus, each ordering to their own tastes,
and neither seemed concerned about the desires of the other.
After their orders and menus were taken,
both veiled themselves behind paperback novels and entered separate fantasies.
From soup to salad to entree there was deathly silence,
as if they had been served the last meal of the condemned.
Our own romantic evening had been sizzling
until we started hanging on their every gesture or lack of gesture,
for they made no contact with each other by eye, ear, or skin.
How we both hoped that those two,
those two about twenty years ahead of us,
had an understanding beyond the need for words
rather than a struggle with simmering silence
to avoid scalding dialogue.
But they skipped dessert.
At that table nothing sweet remained.
Then came waiter, check, credit card, signature,
and somehow their fingers briefly touched and their eyes met.
They apologized to each other,
an I’m sorry for an unwanted touch,
a silent I’m sorry spoken so loudly through their eyes it shouted in our ears.
And our romance cooled to lukewarm
until somewhere on the way home,
we looked at each other and our eyes screamed not us, not us,
and we kissed deeply to wash away the sour aftertaste of dinner.

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