Dining Out

We walked from my apartment
to the Argentinian restaurant on 89th

because I had never been there
and no one I knew had been there.

You ordered the lamb, tender, you
ordered, and it came out held high

in a steaming cloud of roasted meat
and hot paprika and crushed cayenne

with a side order of lentils that looked
like a mound of teardrops or the cut ears

of a small animal. I picked at my salad.
I was full—taut as a balloon with new love—

engorged to my throat. You ate with relish,
large, fast forkfuls—you cut your meat

with a savage saw, tender though it was.
We sat opposite each other in a darkness

as light as smoke. Our red wine glowed
lambent in curved glasses. The waiter had dark

hair and white teeth and was discreet in the shadows.
There were candles on tabletops that flickered,

and your full face for a moment took on a pumpkin’s
leering menace, but I laughed it off because I so

desperately needed to breathe the air you breathed,
to imbibe you, for later, when you would be
with your newly vanquished wife.

*

Barbara Fried is a lifelong 5 a.m. poetry writer and a long-term copywriter, copy editor, and marketing manager. She lives on Cape Cod where, in her back garden, there are deer, coyotes and shy white possums who do play possum and where she has just completed her first book-length collection of poems, The Virginia Poems.