For What We Are About to Receive

I didn’t know I’d wanted this— long tables covered in Indian prints and laid with simple order for the meal, and gathered there, the broken and the lost, hoping to be mended or found or soothed: Annie Murt, and Eddie D and all the others hurt from birth and cruelties, but as kind to me, a visitor, as if they’d always known kindness.

For what we are about to receive: We took our places at the tables, a dark, slim, dashing charmer at mine, noticing me as I noticed him, and I began to sail, with hardly a thought, down the road of sorrow, knowledge, and no regret: all the life I’ve had because of that evening, the man I fell in love with, or the place.