A Million of Us
August 12, 2003
Elizabeth was scribbling down her mounting memories in outline form while i leafed through four years of tourist poetry & phone numbers. We were vacationing with her family in a small beach town in North Carolina at a quaint coffee shop brewing with character. The tourist poetry, left behind in blue & black ink, amused me for probably longer than it should have. in 1998, amanda wrote "i love preston ray james- he is here with me now and thats why i am smiling" while others had written dylan quotes or ::dun dun dun:: star fish poetry.
a group of people entered the cozy tea room where she and i sat under a gigantic magnetic poetry board and they filled the corner seats and tables. the overflow sat literally at the end of my couch.
"so sarah, how old are you?" the ruddy cheeked, white hair man asked the girl sitting next to me.
"sixteen," the girl replied.
"an' she got a boyfriend she is gonna marry" her mother chipped in. the girl toyed with her necklace and mentioned that she and her boyfriend had already decided on their engagement plans.
the ruddy man gasped- in a southern fashion. "why do you want to go and do that?" he exclaimed. "you got a beautiful life ahead of you and there are a million of us out there."
elizabeth immediately glanced over at me but i was already writing it down.