i find myself on an island in a dark sea

Verbal Balance/SpokenWord. Wednesday, June 17, 2009.

The café we sat at was lit with soft light, made cozy by the bright yellow walls. An audience dressed in bright colors milled around, chatting and laughing and eagerly anticipating the SpokenWord poetry we were all getting ready to see. People ordered lattes and chicken salad sandwiches so good that one man turned to his and said, “Baby, you the best.” There was laughter, reunions of old friends, smiling and shuffling of chairs.

Placed in the walls were huge windows, looking out on the neighborhood beyond. That’s where the coziness stopped. The cold windows looked out into an industrial wasteland in the heart of a the South side of Chicago. One streetlight lit a corner. If I glanced outside, I couldn’t help but feel nervous. My eye would catch a car driving slowly by and my heart would pulse a little faster. Every time I saw a shadowy figure appear from around the edge of a building, I wondered if we were safe. But a moment later, they’d enter the door and warm light would illuminate their grins. They’d become human, a friend, part of a safe space.

How this place, The Corner Café, existed I don’t know. The darkness outside might have hidden a more residential area, something to explain the café’s survival or something to explain where to people inside eked out their existence. But there were no questions to be answered in the dark beyond. It was blank, scary. What was evident, however, was the light within.