He's two park benches away, his shirt off, nonchalantly reading a book in one hand with his other arm draped casually over the back of the bench, his dark brown skin gleaming in the sun.
She sits next to him, one bench over, clearly with him but completely different in attitude: her face a screwed-up mask of grief, her shoulders slumped, hands holding her head like she’s keeping it from bursting, or shattering.
He tries to ignore her as she starts to cry, her angry, accusatory tears ripping out of her in hacking sobs, but finally he concedes to whatever trauma she’s going through with a perfunctory, “Shhh, sh.”
After I finish lunch, I walk to the center of the plaza that the benches frame, and look up at the huge column that is the focal point of the park, and there, many stories above, perched on top, is a bird that I can clearly make out to be a hawk, its stooped shoulders brooding over the unknowable dramas far below.
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