5 Women At a Table

There were 5 of us at that table. One about to leave her husband. Two who already had. Two who thought they never would. There were 5 of us at that table who laughed so hard we thought the tables around us might empty because nobody else could hear themselves think - that we might spill our wine or spit up our food or cry. We laughed about the pain of fear and the giddy idiocy of hope and the ridiculous triumph of love over anger and regret and shuddering redundancy. We giggled endlessly about unemployment and the vagaries of sex we have and had and can’t be bothered to have.

The one at the end of the table threw spears and jabs that caught each of us in the neck, tiny flashes of brightly lit words flew across the table and jabbed delicately until they were admitted entrance, swallowed whole and made funny because they were so hopelessly, perfectly on the mark.

I can hardly remember the words. I can remember the faces. I can remember the feeling. I yearn for it the way I crave a particularly unlikely combination of spices in a sauce from a particularly glorious restaurant. The way I yearn to be touched by a flash of hot sun when I find myself caught in a bathing suit in the shade.

There were 5 of us at that table. Two gleefully divorced. One who decided not to leave her husband, afterall. Two still madly in love. Two still happily married. One drawing on a night long ago as if it just happened. Or might again..