The dangling non-conversation

Yesterday. We could hear him coming, the retired airplane mechanic, his dry cough resounding down the street. Lilith and I crossed Hui Iwa to run into him. "I am NOT in a good mood," was his greeting to us. "That fucking [long string of curse words]!!!!!!!" We walked down the long Hui Iwa hill together, he and his dog in front of me and mine. Occasionally, he'd bark at me. "More people out with their dogs this morning," he remarked. "I wonder if they feel the way I do." We passed the Japanese woman with her dog, perhaps the one who'd had gene therapy years ago, or at least another dog like that one. At the corner of Hui Iwa and Hui Aeko Streets, we crossed. The airplane mechanic and his dog followed the cross walk to the other side of Hui Kelu. Lilith and I continued on ours; the mechanic and his dog had disappeared up the hill before we arrived at our parking lot. 

 

There have been fewer Lilith stories of late. I want to write about the way this president, this culture, snatches words away from us. Our vocabularies have been vacuumed up, leaving us to sputter on the sidewalk, even with friends. "How are you?" no longer invites a comment on the weather, the smell of the puakenikene, our dog's habits, but a splutter of words lacking syntax, fraught silences.