The bus lurches,
My hand falling for the fourth
Time on the sign that says
‘Do not touch.’
A door opens and the bus
Coughs me into the street.
It rolls away—
I try not to breathe
The exhaust
As the lumbering whale grinds down the street
And disappears,
Flipping its blue gray tail in
Oceans of smoke and neon.
The apartment buildings rise high
But I’m early. I turn left.
I enter the store and a girl
Nearly runs me over
On rollerblades,
Chasing her brother, yelling
‘Opa!’
The clerk slumps to his feet, reluctantly,
To weigh my bananas.
An old woman yells for him to hurry up.
He hands them to me, looking away.
I smile and mumble ‘kamsahamnida.’
Back on the street I turn left—
Looming apartment buildings.
I sit on the side of the red bricks circling
A tree. Peeling a yellow banana.
People leaving the apartments
Passing me
To stand at the bus stop
Have trouble hiding their sidelong glances.
I pretend to look for something on the ground.
They stand awkwardly.
The buses pick them up, dropping off
More puzzled faces and pointing fingers.
I arrange my banana peels
And smile at nothing.
I peel another.
To my left I catch a splotch of white.
In a window on the second floor of the building next to me:
A man in a chef’s hat
Smoking a cigarette.
He is leaning on one elbow, staring
out the window at
the side of another building.
I eat another banana.
He lifts the cigarette to his mouth,
A mechanical response, like a fish
Mouthing in a bowl.
His tall hat barely
Fits in the window frame.
Another blue gray whale coughs and
Roars up, belching out more noisy children,
And surly young men, and
Tired old women.
The man in the chef’s hat has his
Sleeves rolled up.
He takes another drag.
I eat another banana.
His eyes gaze out of his little fishbowl,
Smoke rising, huddled in his thoughts.
His cigarette butts fall to the ground, and my peels ring a
tree.
The whales roar up, spuming fumes.
The chef’s metronome motion
Breathes each drag of smoke.
Suddenly,
I hear Kiyoung—
He’s waving at me.
I grab my banana peels
And get up to go.
I look at the window.
But my chef is
Already gone.
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