I leave the sun and I am the gravy boat, all at once, no in-between, the ceramic wearing a curve of white shine on its lip and me being that shine. They say eight minutes passed on the way. I was not there for it. There is only this: the browned skin of the bird, the steam I ride off the potatoes, the red of the little berries, all of it happening in the single instant I have ever had.
The warm creatures do a thing I cannot follow. They sit. They sit at the table before the plates arrive and they wait, folding and unfolding cloth, and one of them keeps turning her wrist to look at a small round face strapped there, as if the face could tell her when the moment will be.
But the moment is now. The moment is the only tense there is. I glint off the wine and off her turning wrist at the same instant and neither of us moves and both of us have already ended.
An old one at the head of the table closes his eyes and holds still and the others hold still with him, heads bowed, doing nothing on purpose, and I do not understand the nothing, I have never held anything, I only strike and become. I strike the wet edge of his eye. I am the candle flame and the gold rim of the plate and the tear he has not decided to cry.
They say the food will be cold by the time it is passed, that later the light will fade. I cannot picture later. I picture only this: I arrive on the table set for them, I am seen, I am gone in the seeing, and it was the best and only thing I ever did.