The first flakes of a winter storm float
casually out of a low white sky. Along
with many other office workers I am
in line at a deli waiting to buy lunch.
People glance out the front window,
nod ominously at one another.
Bits of conversation sift through
the lines—the sandwich line, the hot
food line, the self-serve coffee line: we’ve seen
this all before, we’ve never seen this before.
When it’s my turn to order, the young
man making sandwiches asks me if I
like this weather. I tell him that having
grown up here, I am used to it, which amounts
to the same thing. He tells me that in Morocco
the days are warm, the nights chilly and damp.
He touches the stainless-steel counter
with one fingertip. There, when you come outside
in the early morning, you touch the cars
and they are wet. If you buy a new car
or a new bicycle, in one year it is all
rust. I would like to ask him more
about Morocco, but mindful
of the people behind me, I do not.
Waiting in line to pay, I clutch my paper bag
on which he has scribbled an indecipherable
price and stare out at the snow—falling more
urgently now, as if for the first or last time.