February 5, 2013

garnish
 
It lay there, loyally, alongside the complicated salad
greeting the lunch guests on the buffet line. Then,
a little further down, it reappeared,
circling the marinated peppers, the eggplant rolls, and again,
two platters later, like an asterisk, with the cold shrimp
and the exclamatory bowl of cocktail sauce. After the meal
was over, it would be wiped into the trash along with the limp
leftovers the chef couldn't recycle, so I don’t know why I will
remember that small clutch of green over the resplendent collection
of dishes. Except I do. The quiet company it kept, not needing the attention.