On the streetcar heading downtown, a woman around my age is doting over a little boy who’s sitting in a stroller in front of her. “We’ll first go to ‘such and such’ a store and then we’ll go to ‘such and such,’ and then we’ll go to the park.” she says, and he responds, “I’m hungry. I want to eat!” With that, she takes out a graham cracker and holds it for him while he takes some bites. She wipes his lips with a tissue, then takes out some juice and gives him a couple of sips. She tells him something else, then looks around at the faces watching the whole affair. Realizing the expressions are sympathetic, she smiles at everyone, as I try to imagine what it feels like to be 2 years old again, housed in a stroller, on my way to some place without having any say in the matter, completely dependent on someone who I haven’t really known for all that long.
Jeffrey Zable is a teacher and conga drummer who plays Afro Cuban Folkloric music for dance classes and Rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area. His poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies. His recent writing appears in MockingHeart Review, Colloquial, Ordinary Madness, Third Wednesday, After The Pause, Fear of Monkeys, Brickplight, Tigershark, Corvus, and many others.In 2017 he was nominated for both The Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.