A foot-long Subway sandwich. Of the cold cut variety. Touching the fine buns in the shadow of some academic building in the heart of West Bank, Minneapolis. The Mississippi flushes by moving south. Garnishes had fallen on the ground before me. The broken concrete as a catcher’s mitt. I sat on a grey block people-watching, watching people, watching trees turn in wind semi-cool, watching the sun slip where it passes from point high to point gone. Each bite was something to take in, something like energy. And folly, I had forgotten my water on a hot day.
These trees though, they stood different, silently drinking deep with their roots. People walked scholarly ways between. Probably unnoticed. Probably apathy. An easy moment free. Verdant green leaves, cut-out cardboard scraps, twisted giving a dry paper sound rubbed out together in reciprocal fashion, disposable bag’s fleet—something Halloween, orange and happy in decorative ideal of waning fall. Here today mid-summer they stood again, taking the lost. My sandwich had unusually robust bread, the kind they show in commercials to dampen your mouth, the kind that makes me question its creation.
A few eyes caught me eating as well, with the day, the sun, the shade, next thing on the agenda. Others hidden behind frames did nothing to heed my pupil’s calling. Glass reflecting the ground. Reflecting motion. Pencil skirts and the walking dead. Each person to their time. A wave from across the mall, ah, a familiar face. The cement cooled my assed jeans. My eyes watched leaves cut the light from dim to bright to green to warm to the blue passing and sandstone tan bricks of a hall I had never entered.
The cold cut combo. Something of a sandwich. I think, or maybe it was the black forest ham. I am sure this would be German. I am sure. I am guessing it was not because of the variety of meat; some American sandwich in my hand as I read about Miyamoto on my phone and Nintendo stock and think about dirty hands just washed and how work just works. People go by working to, working on them. A crane lifts pallets with materials over sand and over a river. Washington bridge spans. Something about the city. Eating. Regimen of social and sustenance. Riots, violence, and sun.
***
I also found irony in that a musician friend of mine, and former professor, voted for Britain to stay in the EU from the United States.
