Last Night

We started out when the night was young.

First, to an establishment whose very name promised food in packages, and it did not fail. Wrapped in banana leaves, environment friendly as compared to styro boxes, though I don’t think the banana tree/plant from where the leaves were chopped off would agree with me. Beef steak on banana leaves, never had that before, nor have I ever been a fan of salted eggs whose slices I separated from the rice rice, like a surgeon working a scalpel between fresh and rotting flesh.

Nothing like a good beer afterwards, but it was not on the menu, and so we decided to change venues, and found ourselves on a local coffee shop.

Cappuccino in hand, we chided a friend that we went there for coffee and not to ogle jailbaits. Coffee shops serve coffee, not fresh meat. Though I have to confess that I did take notice of the girl near the entrance even before we parked the car. I even took more notice of her when, just as I was pushing the glass door on my way inside, she crossed her legs while sitting on that brown chair, very much like an invitation to come in. But I was after coffee, not meat, fresh, used, or what else.

A hello here and a wave there, our city being so much like the common playground. Familiar faces flashed, some like fast cars, others like a tricycle laboring over the last meters before the engine finally dies.

Coffee was good, but there is nothing like beer. The car engine purrs, as if in anticipation of a kill, of the thrill of the hunt, or the language for the promise of a wild and rough night, bared tongues and claws.

Ooops.

The travel was brief, the flash of the lights and the boom and beats signaling the presence of beer.

The night was young, nubile, and pregnant with promises about to be born.

I hear my name, and my glance reveals old faces, familiar faces, faces I have never seen for quite a long time.

Hands shake. A kiss to the head. Cheeks greet in the manner of lips. They are my brothers and sisters, bound not by blood, nor by similarities in our brief, and for the most part of the past years, distant lives. If anything, we are all brothers and sisters because we are who we are, each and every one of us.

It was a night of words, yet no words describe it.

Afterwards, all alone on my way home after my third set of coffee, while waiting for my ride, I wondered, and somehow realized, that it is very much indeed good to be alive, when friends (oh, I forgot to mention the past lover who was also there who I am very sure saw me, though I cannot tell if she affirmed my existence) come out when you least expect them, where a few minutes burns far longer in memory, brief moments before they have to be absent again, in the hope that faces will see each other some other day again.

Or some other night perhaps.