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The Blurt
The man across the table waiting for my take is not unkind. In fact, his hair stands up sweetly like a boy’s as he offers me some praise I must deflect. A little jewel lobbed my way and throwing beams from all its facets, the kudo rides the charge of light between our sturdy roles. Of course, I want to catch it, enjoy the way it cools the palm and will later weight the paper on my desk, but even as it lofts my open ego, I’m sure others are more worthy, or worse, that if I take it I’ll be jinxed and never see its like again. Maybe it’s just midwestern diffidence that leaps to intercept the gem and save it for the velvet drawer. All this action happens over plates of greens with tangled stems, seeds and spices that tease and sting the troubled tongue, so when I down it all and open for response, the blurt who lives somewhere deep in what might be raw gut or lizard brain, sneaks up, looks around with those comic mobile eyes, and speaks, oh God, that thing crouched inside. I know there are those to whom this ordinary shame never comes, but mine’s alive even in the kindest company. It clicks its claws and likes to bare ferocious little teeth, but it’s not, like a cat, immune to what you think. Sometimes it hangs around all night when the encounter’s long forgotten by the man across the table. The blurt assigned to him a power and feeds it in the dark with oily possibilities that agitate toward dream. Even when the worst has already passed, and I’m no one again— like a child, but without a future’s magic wand, the blurt knows how to hurt by simply sticking to its source.