☀ Today's Poem:"Frankfurt" Rachel Mannheimer

The facial recognition technology
they're using to board the plane
is, of course, strictly optional.

The young family
in whose apartment
I'm staying on my employer's dime
has moved here from Rome. The woman shows me
how to make stovetop espresso
and serves me,
that first morning, two slices
of a chocolate ring-cake, so dry
it turns to powder in my mouth. There will be cake
every morning of my stay here —
the same cake getting drier by the day —
served on a folded paper napkin on a plate.

The second morning, she suggests
that I may take it to my room, so I take the napkin
and, every day, wrap the cake to smuggle out
and deposit it
in a public trashcan. Every day, as I walk,
I end up eating most of it.

Your name, it sounds so German, the ticket woman says.
German Jewish, yes, I say.
Huh. I've never heard it, shakes her head.

Outside a shop, one man holds a window squeegee, double-sided
with the squeegee and the scrubber. He's washing the window
while another man looks on, either learning how to do it
or making sure the first one does it right.
The goal is to not see the glass. I think he's doing great.

I look through
to the phones for sale, tethered to the tables.
I'm waiting to text Chris.
It could be that they're taking turns,
keeping each other company.

A bus pulls up and carries
my reflection away.

The streets are empty, and I'm not sure
when it happened, when it came to seem
actively dangerous to be apart. Alone, I feel
alone, but violently. Like half.

The streets are empty, so I wait with pleasure
in the safety of a line outside a restaurant —
Vietnamese street food, which suggests
wholly different streets.
Once inside, I'm seated
at a table for four
and, after I order, am joined by a man
who, when he orders,
is British. We don't speak. He presumably remains
unaware that we could.

Over the Atlantic, in the row ahead,
a woman attempts to return her breakfast muffin,
unopened in its plastic,
to the flight attendant.
No, it can't be saved.
Everything will be incinerated.