Eating Alone In A Chinese Restaurant Poem by RIC BASTASA

all my life i never imagine myself eating alone.
there is something detestable i think when a person eats alone.
either he is selfish to have to share a conversation with someone else
or that he is shutting himself away from this world where each must belong
to someone else, lest one can be branded as another scrooge
before Christmas, a misanthrope, a man who has no capacity to relate to
another human being, or even with a pet dog, or cat, to join him eating
in a restaurant.

i have seen some who eat alone in a Chinese restaurant, their eyes fixed on
the other customers eating alone too, sipping the bird's nest soup with the sound of a pig or a big bird, as though eating alone becomes a socially
acceptable action. I do not bother asking them, why they eat alone and look
stupid with their lonely eyes, falling faces, less hair, and protruding teeth.

then i start to eat alone by myself. I look at the passers-by one rainy day
through the glass window of the restaurant. I enjoy the noodles and the
sweet sour pork and the bottomless red tea and the jasmine rice.

i tell you, it did not take that long really to learn to live my life alone.
after you left me.

It is this eating alone in a Chinese restaurant which taught me. And now i am beginning to like it.

Sans love. Sans anybody.