is hard to read like a book without a title or a black book labeled with black letters and one would guess hiding a plot of murder, mystery, tragedy or shocking revelation and yet the hardest faces I’ve risked opening, revealed a fragile story, a broken soul, poorly mended a brittle human one relatable enough that I will turn their pages as gently as I do my own story’s and if anonymous histories mirror much of each other, then every hard face you see is simply a

somewhere above all the tables’ umbrellas, linked in an understory of fabric below the canopy of a pair of giant bougainvillea within the confusion of their twisted woody vines and mingling with the sounds of silverware rudely bumping ceramic plates, patron chatter and music chosen for mastication, I hear the noisiest bickering of sparrows, diving for crumbs or anticipating crumb sympathy meaning at least one family is delighted they came here for breakfast

I’ve met outgoing hummingbirds so there have to be shy lions I’ve seen daring dragonflies so scared squirrels must be out there my two dogs couldn’t be more different - think Chris Farley and just deceased Queen Elizabeth and haven’t we’ve all had a car whose idiosyncrasies drove us crazy and another one, a face in a sweet memory, we’ll miss? what in life doesn’t have a personality? even a property tax bill arrives all serious and business-like, a parent reminding y