The Smile Takes Baton

First, the generous smile is

served alongside pleasantries.

Then I am asked to repeat my name.

I even spell it once for

good measure,

and feign laughter with them at the

gender ambiguity of it.

Once names,

sometimes professions,

sometimes neighbourhoods,

have been taken stock of,

the smile takes baton again.

“What are you?” they ask.

I should have a script:

That’s what everyone says, or

It’s my grandmother, or better still,

Want to see my I.C.?

But I don't

and hide my manners behind

an extended sip of drink,

as they lace

stereotypes with persistence,

terrorizing me with their own scripts:

CMI.

Perhaps I am O.

Perhaps I am here on a Pass,

so they nod with the sympathy

of a good host,

some vain welcome.

When it becomes obvious

they cannot fish an answer,

their smiles sink,

flattened into their faces like arid land,

cracked and embarrassed.

I can, like I have before,

be like numbers and decimal places,

rounding myself off to the closest profile

people can identify with.

I could also light up a cigarette to

toughen me for the impending scrutiny.

Or I could really just answer them.

But today,

I cannot be responsible again

for their disappointment

when they realise I am not

as exotic.

It is hard to wring empathy

when they agree cleverly with each other that

all my type looks this way.

It goes on like this for a while:

Their awkwardness snakes in and out of this conversation,

alternating with some of my guilt for being difficult.

Finally I resurrect the conversation with

some opinion on the pasta salad,

all the while returning to the notion of curiosity:

my longtime desire for a

more convenient reflection,

their question.