After I ordered a skinny mocha,
I took the only open seat in the store
between two old men with glasses and grey hair.
The one to my right was reading
“Electronics for Dummies” and muttering
out loud to himself about how
this goes there then that goes there and this happens,
oh okay so I plug this into that and press this button…
his finger tracing the page under each line of text.
Back in the day, the one to my left was a history teacher
in Boston, he told me. He picked through a stack
of educational magazines and told me
of his view on politics.
And in that moment, I formed thoughts
intelligent enough to live in a city.
