Midnights, March: 25

This afternoon, the type of warm early spring afternoon where the new shoots are so hearty-green they're almost blue, the baby fell asleep on our walk. I parked his stroller next to a bench. I pulled out my notebook. I pulled out a pen. And then I sat, watching the river, and scribbled in said notebook with said pen for ten glorious minutes. 

At which point an elderly couple approached along the trail, their smiles hungry, their gait surprisingly quick.

“What do you have in there?” they called out coyly. 

“Eighteen pounds of pure black tar heroin,” I thought but did not say. 

Nor did I say, “What do you think, old woman? This is the weight of my own mortality. Careful! It bites!”

What I most wish I’d said was, “Biggest damn pigeon you've ever seen.”

They came right up to us as if they owned the place and cooed loudly enough that the baby's eyes fluttered open in surprise. 

“What's all this?” he asked me with a look. “More grandparents?”

The woman bent close to my face. “I haven't had one of them in sixty-seven years.”

Sixty-seven years! Then she must be at least in her late eighties. And still her lipstick shade was so fresh. 

Yet they had woken my sleeping baby and must therefore be my enemies for all time.