doppelgängers

seated across the way, near the doctor-your-drink station in one of the campus coffee shops, is a young man (maybe twenty-five years old) with bushy dark-brown hair, wearing a turquoise t-shirt. close by, on his right, is an older silver-haired woman.

it's lunch time. so they're eating. but, unlike others here, they're not eating food from the starbucks. instead -- hosting a kind of indoor picnic -- they have before them an array of tupperware containers, full of food that had been prepared at home. they have laid out piles of napkins on the tabletop. they have brought along their own metal cutlery. and as the man sits quietly in the black wheelchair, with its rounded cushioned headrest, the woman lifts forkfuls of food gently into his mouth.

these are the moments, after loved ones have left, that you ache for. the moments when you get to see ghosts. Graham and Mom used to sit together just like this. wielding metal forks and tupperware, from within their own sacred space. a sacred space that's now all mine to share in once again. from up close. from very far away.

and now back to translating...