What did he want,
smoking cigarettes and drinking
tea,
a stranger sitting in a chair
watching us?
People were talking in the room.
My mother was walking in and out.
Two men arrived to repossess
my refrigerator. The stranger
watched
and listened. It made me think of
a man
I had read about in a vegetative
state
who had been mysteriously
awakened
by a tranquilizer.
Two men were ready to repossess
my refrigerator. This is nothing
but
a piece of junk, one said to me,
and I looked to the stranger,
this man,
smoking cigarettes and drinking
tea.
Come and sit down, he said, and
together
we watched them carry out my
refrigerator
and we looked at the empty space
it had made.
In the story of the man in the
vegetative
state, he had been given a
tranquilizer
by the dentist to ease his pain.
The stranger looked at me. I like
it here,
he said. I would like to stay
here with you.
I remember in the story of the
man,
he had awakened fully and spoken
to his
friends for a few hours, but then
relapsed slowly into his former
state.
I watched the stranger finish his
cigarette
and saw that something was
happening already.
I would like to stay, he said to
me. I would
really like to stay.
