1.
There's a regular at the local brasserie—last seat, always, hugging the wall
like a sea urchin.
You don't know he's a surgeon, but he is.
He’s never introduced himself as such
during the fleeting conversations you've had at days’ end.
2.
The man’s hands are unusually clean. Not a speck of grime underneath
those arduously manicured nails.
Scarcely idle, he rotates his ring around the circumference of his finger,
mechanically, like clockwork. Joints, fantasized
as gears moving under the skin.
3.
That’s when you notice where he's looking, those same gears
turning at the corners of his mouth
until he's smiling like a fool. He looks like your brother.
He looks like your father.
He has that carnivorous look in his eye that all surgeons do. He needs to get inside you,
to rearrange you into something that does not quite exist yet,
or a person, who would care.