White Russians and Paper Tornadoes

I’m unphotogenic, I think. And I can't help but wonder if my resume is also unphotogenic. If I look too  big on paper, too faint, too messy or too bold.

I wonder these things aloud, so Lady Hem hears me.  Orders us another round and tells me I’m wrong. “You’re just more beautiful as a living person,” she says.

“Is trapping a tornado in 750 words like bottling an ocean?”

 “Stop worrying,” she says. Our glasses clink.

 Lady Hem tells me that I’m clearly the poet of the two of us. That she’s the sharp point of the pencil and that I’m the clouds in the sky. She underestimates her value, weaving stories with electric eyes. We blink and sip and sigh. We order more and I'm happy again.

I used to think of Hem as my fun friend; my writing and whiskey whirlwind of a friend. The one who snaps expectations in half and indulges my need for daily mischief. “Our lives are like books,” she once said, after shameless misadventure. “It’s too bad we can’t let anyone read them.”

We part ways on 96^th street beneath an endless sheet of gray, and I wonder if she knows that she’s my strand of Christmas lights.

I forget to tell her that lately I’ve been typing in my dreams, and stuttering at interviews in my dreams, and kissing strangers in my dreams. I like telling Lady Hem things like this.