Note to Therapist
Just as I was on my way to telling you how happy I’ve been, how everything for once seems to be conspiring in my favor, how, even taking care of myself gives me a sense of contentment, just as I was crossing the street, an old man walked towards me, the owner of the Greek diner on the main drag who’s been in that business at least thirty years. He was wearing a suit too hot for an August day and had a pot belly that reminded me of my own Romanian grandfather who often wore a suit in summer to his hot dress shop on the corner of 99th and Second Avenue in Spanish Harlem, where he used his limited English and even more minimal Spanish to communicate with his customers. His large standing fan would circulate moist and musty air while he sat backwards on a wicker chair, his belly filling the concave hollow of the chair’s back as he waited for the iceman to come with his pick, tongs and slicing wire, tools for a cool drink. These men from the Old World, I thought, they all work until they die. And I burst into tears.
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Sharon Mast grew up in the Bronx and returned to it after seventeen years abroad in Great Britain and New Zealand. Her poems have been published in The Cortland Review, Pacific Review, Topical Poetry, and First Literary Review – East, and her creative nonfiction has appeared in Multiplicity Magazine. She currently lives in Columbus, Ohio.