The man across from me shakes his head. I can’t tell if it’s in disapproval of the scene unfolding over there, or in response to the newspaper he’s reading, but he does it so frequently I conclude he just disapproves of everything. The other ten or twelve of us shift our weight, our glances, even the space we temporarily claim; the latter at the suggestion of freedom that this annoying little twirler apparently has.

I pile my bags on the seat beside me. As if in a choreographed chorus line, others follow suite. For once, and what a delicious moment it is, we don’t have to make ourselves compact like we usually do when it’s crowded, confining our possessions to our laps or on the floor between our feet. No elbow jabs or rolling eyes, no loud talkers, loud sights, or loud smells, no sensory overload. A near-empty subway car is a sort of playground for us, too.

On fried fish Friday (fry day)
Residual heat from the cast-iron skillet
while cornmeal dregs sink to the bottom
Tilapia encrusted golden
Fried and napping in a basket
Perched on paper towels

A big pot of steaming grits
The scoop & slop motion from ladle to plate
is love
you say “thanks, that’s enough”
but she doesn’t agree.
You want cheese?
No time to answer before the cheddar starts to
melt and pool
While lava streams of butter
Flow in tributaries
Emptying out along the edge of your plate.

Then come the collards.
Then comes the cornbread.
Then comes the bread pudding.
Full.

Welcomes in mouthfuls
A wash of warmth from
Soul-filling things.

II

The second weekend after I moved in, I met the couple staying in the AirBnb next door. It started off as small talk. When did I get here, where am I from, how do I like the weather. They were from Georgia, in town for a few days to go to a funeral and see a few friends. We stood on the porch while our arms swung up like windshield wipers, shooing flies and wiping sweat from our foreheads. That merciless 3pm heat. We quickly got around to food, a subject that usually means that small talk won’t stay small for long. Do you like crawfish?

The wife went into the house and came back holding a large plastic bag of bright red crustaceans. My eyes fixed on all of the claws. The scent of ocean and Cajun spices seeped through the ziplock that wasn’t fully zipped.

Here. This is from the boil we went to last night.
I hesitated. You sure?
They insisted.

The next day they delivered a second large bagful from another boil they went to. A mélange of clawed things, corn on the cob, and potatoes that, combined with the previous day’s bag, took four days to finish.

III

On one hand, it’s not about being strangers, although the effect might hit deeper. On the other, it’s not about friendship either because friendship is not a prerequisite to sharing. Of course, strangers can develop a friendship through the rich soil of exchange.

The beauty about sharing food is that, while tangible and invokes all of our senses, it nourishes the invisible. A lifeline and a connector, a conduit of love and mutual fulfillment. Through it we learn how to recognize love and how to give it. Hand to hand to mouth to heart, all lessons in filling empty things. Bowls, hands, mouths, souls. “There is more happiness in giving,” proof of a multilayered truth.

On the receiving end
we say
I don’t deserve this.
How can I repay you?
We turn transactional when thank you doesn’t feel like enough. To exchange one thing of worth for another. Whatever we exchange, it’s a heartwarming scene. In this case, an extending and reaching out in which hands serve as a meeting place between the physical and the spiritual.

And so first I thought of things. All the times when something is right there, even visible, but is on its way, away. And then I thought of people. All the times when I am here and they are there, as we slant away from each other. (I was simply thinking of life and movement, here. This was acceptance, not sadness.) In the distance, I noticed the delicate white lines swept across the sky, the breath of airplanes long gone by. We are often vapor trails that overlap but don’t touch. The lines of this kind of intersection are both melancholy and joy because in the lightness there is also a letting go.

Our conversations dip into the pot and draw up time. The ladle asks: Where did the week go? Where did the month go? Where did the summer go? Is it already September? But we say that every year, don’t we? No, not in the way we’ve been saying it lately. Our asking is brined in emotion and carries the latent pain of whiplash.

I lost count of the boarded windows and out of business signs, neighborhood haunts for decades now gone for good. A mere fraction of people populate the sidewalks that on any given day used to pulse with life. Two-thirds of each face, including my own, is obscured by a mask. I stumbled upon a street whose sidewalk is peppered with a gentle spray-painted reminder every ten feet or so, that “It’s okay to be black.”

We can’t just add water and stir to make everything whole, to reconstitute memories that feel like dehydrated morsels of what used to be. “Just” assumes ease and does not encapsulate the weight or importance of what’s actually happen(ed)(ing).

It’s as if time went inward, stitching itself into our muscles and tissues, coating our every nerve ending. And in that vein, as carriers of time, the only way to go is forward. Find yourself tripping over your own feet to keep up with time’s acceleration? Me too. But we’re still moving. Time has shown its ugliness in our recent past. But there is consolation in even the simple fact that we are still present.

They are cozily tucked behind several doors. Five layers of them, as you recount the journey in your mind. First the front door. Then the inside front door and the brief humph of breath that leaves you as you push it open. Then the interruption of 26 stairs. Then the door to your apartment. Then the dim, narrow hallway. Then the door to your bedroom. Then the door to your closet. All those doors and their knobs. And that’s when it hits you how cold your hands are.

It happens in the space between your loud mind and the soft wind, when cold trills around your fingers. Your hands curl up into fists, trying to stoke heat. Then a stiff breeze turns hair and scarves sideways. Your eyes zoom in on the hands of the woman standing just steps away on the platform. Those delicious thick wool gloves. A twinge of envy sets ablaze inside your chest. Why did I forget them? This awareness is a conflagration.

You know exactly where they are. Rolled up one inside of the other into a fuzzy little ball. Periwinkle because it’s a specific shade of sky that you like. Back left corner of the middle drawer. Snuggled between sleepwear and socks. You think of the hearth mittens offer to fingers and how just the vision of them is a kindling crackle. But the vision soon fades.

The digitized countdown on the subway platform says 3 min, and you are struck by its audacity. Time’s penchant for cruelty, how mean. That waiting is cold. That waiting is lonely. That waiting is regret. That waiting is a stiff, strong drink with too much ice. That hope wrapped in imagination is an artificial fire behind plexiglass.

But then you see subway lights heading towards you from a distance. Heat couched in each car for you to sink into. Your fingers begin to thaw at the mere sight of it. And suddenly, waiting has company. Waiting becomes warmth.

II

I almost forgot. The walk to the subway feels like just another walk, but then I enter the train and remember that I didn’t leave my house for no reason. I wish it was just simply because.

The subway car seats are blue. The color we arbitrarily call powder blue. Powder is peace. Powdered snow is a pillow to fall in. Powdered sugar coats fried and baked things and raises taste buds to ecstasy. Powder is a puff of perfume to pat on a décolleté. I enter into the vortex of blue things we already know are calming, like sky and ocean. But so are blueberries, blue jays, and forget-me-nots. And then I exit this weaving of comfort and color. The seats are hard. I wriggle. I didn’t leave my house today just to sink into powder blue.

The subway, for now, is a waiting room.
The subway, for now, is a waiting room.

III

Waiting is a curtain
but it does not stay
draped and bunched on the stage forever
Overhead lights illuminate spectacle while
Shadows cradle suspense

Players in the corridor
recite their lines with choreographed grace
Others ignorant of the script
improvise
which is the role you fill
You touch the vignette haze
of your frame

The curtain lifts upon
disparate settings of
patience and endings

The friends finally arrive
Sulking finally turns to laughter
The scene is finally found
The moment is finally grasped by the shutter
The train finally pulls in
You finally find a seat
Your name is finally called
The test is finally administered
Another week finally ends
Again finally the test
The phone finally rings
The diagnosis is finally given

You exit stage left
The holding of breath is finally let go

I saw these grave injuries and a strange internal aww awakened in me as I passed by. Its skin peels and curls at the edges as if broiled, the singe clinging to brick. Hangs as if scratched and clawed at. Devoid of its power, guts out, it sags into strips of sad lumber. Looks mighty fragile for a symbol we usually know to be strong. I stared, then felt rude for staring and looked away, and caught myself. Did I just consider that I’d offended a door?

Ugly beauty is how I described it while talking about the mangled door with C. “Même pas,” she said, “it’s raw.” And that’s just it. This is why the sympathy lands just so. We all can relate to feeling singed and unpeeled, stripped of the power we were created with or given. No one is supposed to see the flesh beneath our skin, or to hear our roars and rage and outcries and sighs and groans, and yet.

The word “still”, as in the continuation of a state up to and including the present, holds some of the power the door surrendered, but the door is still able.

See the door.
See the peeling door.
See the peeling door that is shut.
See the peeling door that can still open.
See the peeling door that can still open, close, slam, lock, unlock, and welcome.

The challenge lies in learning to gain trust in a new relationship. There’s something that happens to the psyche when color is quieted, stripped, drained. The eye searches for something that can fit its template of predictable comforts, but that degree of familiarity is hard to find in a grayscale world. You either compromise on a specific thing you’re looking for, find something better than what you were looking for, or search with no purpose but wow was that a good find. All of that simmering reduces the challenge to this: to accept that color is not a completion.

II

Which color (not black) is so saturated that in grayscale will render as black? Which color (not white) is so brilliant that it will render as white? In a colored photo, why do some shadows photos render as shy gauze, but when in grayscale look darker than a black hole? This occurred to me when a bold red in a full-color photo suddenly acted reticent when I applied a black and white filter. But don’t we do that, too? We sometimes surprise ourselves when put in an entirely new context. One person can drain you of your essence, while another can enhance it. Standing in one room can strip you of your inhibitions, while standing in another makes you want to pile on more layers. We can gaze in absolute awe at a majestic panorama and feel small, while remembering we are gargantuan to ants. The latter is the rare quality of a color that seems to behave the same no matter the setting or filter, but I’d be willing to bet that kind of balance is rare.

III

This spectrum is a matte mirror. I don’t find it a coincidence that the word “exposure” is used in photography. How much [light] do we let in, and for how long? Both the object and observer fall prey to the camera’s uncanny ability to to be a revelatory sage. So who is capturing whom? It feels a bit like jumping into an intense relationship with a stranger. 

Nice to meet you.

What’s your name? 

Now tell me your deepest secrets.

IV

Why don’t the colors in this spectrum have names? Charcoal, slate, graphite, metals, and shiny minerals are specific, but calling something “dark” or “light” gray feels lazy and weak. Perhaps herein lies a clue: to search for a name is to search for a meaning. The quest churns up old clichés. Indecision, neutrality, uncertainty, ambiguity. But what if being unnamed is the point? Is this range of hues simply beyond meaning, meta-? Or maybe there’s no meta- about it and grayscale really is as nebulous as it projects itself to be. Nameless because we don’t understand it. Complex, faceless, incomprehensible. Tension resides in all of this ambiguity, which could also be argued lends depth to the relationship. 

And so that tension is ever-present. These unfathomable shadows. To fathom is to sound and to sound is to pronounce and to pronounce is to sharpen to clarify to highlight to elucidate and lucidity is light. But un- is to set in reverse like untying laces, walking backwards, balloons deflating, raindrops ascending, puddles de-splashing, breath returning to the lungs, deleting. See how un- draws the shadow from behind that light? And yet despite that light, the shadow that outlines it remains unnamed and a mystery. 

V

Enough, generosity, completion without color. I found myself looking for shadows, as if the light wasn’t enough. I found myself looking for light, as if the shadows weren’t enough. I’ve already theorized that color isn’t a completion, but neither is light, neither is shadow. In a world of color it’s easy to show that yes, today was a sunny day. But in this other world, black and white aren’t so generous. You have to recruit clues that divide light from darkness. The black and white poles that birth it are decisive. But gray? 

Colors behave as humans do. Or, at least, the way our eyes assign them to. Hold one color up against the other, you see how they pulse, blend, or retract. Hue against nuanced hue. The red object is still red, it hasn’t changed. But wearing the superlative idontknow of color, it and the colors around it behave as if they’re away from their parents for the first time. Indecisive, overconfident, and shy, all at the same time. That’s not a bad thing. It just means that in this relationship I have to be the generous one to understand that. Maybe that’s what the completion is.