Writer’s Aid

A man who gets to eat a steak as big and soft as a baseball glove is supposed to be lucky in love. 
That’s what I read on a wall yesterday. It was written in clean, tight script above a drawing of an 
empty plate—dotted with blobs of mustard and ketchup. I don’t know who put it there. I don’t 
know why this is true, because no one I know has ever eaten a steak drooping over the sides of 
a plate, waiting to have a fork and knife plunge into its tender flesh. No one I know is in love 
either, but that’s a different story. Perhaps this is why I spend my days getting on long silver 
buses and sitting next to you, whoever you are and wherever you are going. I never say much 
more than “excuse me” or “hello, sorry to take up this space beside you.” That’s because I am 
waiting for you to open your mouth and for the words that you have stored up inside, the ones 
knotted around your heart, to spill out, a soft steady torrent that might cause whiplash in the 
unprepared or ill-equipped. You always look different, while I am just the same—a blank book 
you want to fill with your tales of torment and disaster.