I go into a cool café, sit down, look around. Young couple chatting to my right. Over the way a woman deep in her laptop. Wedged into a corner table - another couple: she like Beth Ditto and he a young James Baldwin. My snap judgment is that they don’t know one another very well. Her laugh is staccato and his tone very low. I can just make out her American accent but only an odd word or two floats over. The waitress takes my order, I switch to another bandwidth and pay them no more attention. A while later, I don’t know how long, I become vaguely aware of a silence around them. I hear no farewell noises but he gets up and, passing my table, turns back to her and hisses: “ I hope you die in a head-on”. Then walks out. It takes me a second or two to grasp the words, then I glance at her. She has picked up a book and is staring at its pages but I can see that her eyes are reddening.
neverending
speakers stream
cool jazz
*A haibun is a traditional Japanese form which combines prose with haiku.