Look at the light on this table. It came from wax, which is fire that agreed to be slow, and everyone is sitting inside its glow as though glow were a normal thing to have and not the single most important event of a life.
There is so much food that the food has furniture. Little dishes for the small salt, a boat entirely for the brown sauce, spoons that do nothing but hand you more. I have eaten once, this morning, and it was enough, it was the meal, and here they are having six meals stacked into one and calling it dinner.
The old one at the end says they do this "every year." I stop. Every. I turn the word over. They have sat at this exact table, with this heat and this light and these faces, and then, impossibly, they did it before, and they believe they will do it after. They speak of "last time" without amazement. One of them is on their glowing rectangle under the table, sighing, saying it is "the same as always."
The same. As always.
I could weep, except I have no time budgeted for weeping and I would rather spend it looking. Because here is the scandal: the small ones are glowing brighter than the candles, shrieking, ripping the colored skins off gifts, and the tired ones are watching the door for who is late instead of watching this, the warmth, the brown boat, the wax being fire slow enough to sit inside.
You get thousands of these. Thousands. You cannot even hear me.
So hear this instead: pass the salt to the one you almost forgot to look at. Now. Do it before the wax is gone. This is the meal.
There is only ever the meal.