The Peanut-Butter Cookie 2
-How old was he?
-About my age.
-Tell me about him, again.
-There's not much to tell. I was standing on the curb. I didn't see him coming. Suddenly, there he was. I found myself looking into his eyes. They were gray, I think.
-And?
-He stopped. He opened the paper bag he was carrying and held it out. Obviously, I was supposed to help myself. The bag was jaded and looked like it had seen alot of action, that particular morning.
-The cookies!
-Yep, the cookies. It wouldn't be nice to refuse. In those days, people still worried about such things.
-Courtesy is the most efficient form of coercion. Everybody wins.
-Be that as it may, I reached into the bag and took out-surprise-a peanut-butter cookie. I knew it was a peanut-butter cookie. It was sandy blond and had hatch marks from a fork on top.
-So you ate the cookie?
-Unh-unh.His hands were filthy, the little urchin, my doppelganger. But I waved the cookie around as if I was delighted to have it, and wanted, at that moment, nothing more. It seemed the nice thing.
-So what happened to him?
-How should I know? Suddenly he was gone.
Awful! Is consciousness just circular memory? Is reality?
-Gone. He moved on. Rejoined the parade.
-But he wormed his way into your menagerie of long-term memories-
-I guess.
-It's sad, you know.
-Why do you say that?
-Because he was so young and so poor. He's probably not even alive. He probably died of starvation. A protein deficiency.
-That's morbid. He may be quite alive and kicking. He may have won the lottery for twenty million and have eighteen grandkids.
-You're right, I guess. I just assumed...
-Don't. It tells more about the person making the assumption than about reality. People always assume tragedy.
-You're right, of course. How did it end?
-I heard my mother calling.Looking over my shoulder I saw the statue of Billy Penn-way up, the sun glinting off his hat. Then, there was my mother. In the flesh. Big as life. She grabbed my wrist and hustled me on. She was mad. Because I got away, I guess.
-And that was that?
-And that was that.
poem by Morgan Michaels
Added by Poetry Lover
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