Do I seek out these hushed corners of life? I find myself inching away from the fracas and soft eying the entire scene. To watch my tiny world with a wonder and a frown. Staring at a girl looking at the magazine rack, talking to her man on the phone. I always want to be on the other end of the call from a girl looking at magazines. I don't suppose it has ever occured to me that many times I was probably that man. I believe that is the magic of being that person, for he does not know I was staring longingly at the girl looking at the magazine rack for to be the man she was talking to on the phone, so he does not know he is the man she is talking to on the phone. For all the times he has felt the three week's growth on his cheek, plucked dry, coarse tones on his talentless guitar and sucked on the insides on his mouth in pure frustrated desire, he does not know his station of the man on the phone with the girl at the magazines, while I look and sing and weep.

I met Pablo Neruda for the first time this morning and I felt like a mariner. Introduced by a leading heart and a kind tongue, I nibble the poem like a child sick with the flu, eating his first crackers in days. Starving I am for the words to be hers, though when I am finished, when I lay back on the couch, my pink belly covered in crumbs I know it will be still long before I am well.