She sits with her friend at the table across from me. Friends from university, maybe old roommates. The tall one suggests a cookie for a snack; folks designing cakes and fig pastries for a good time in love. A tiger decides to enter, and I'm tricked into the silence the heart brings upon itself when it tries to sing. Desperate Manitoulin prospectors discuss the Mediterranean problem, the excess plankton in the Tyrhennian, the lack of good men in the space shuttle. The other day, I could smell the sweat on her lips. I tasted the anger of Zeus, first son of immortals; the lantern on the hill glowed green, and the blood in my head froze blue.