Let me see people alone at Panera today when I stop for a snack

Prayer from the Parking Lot

Let me see people alone
at Panera today
when I stop for a snack.
I’ll smile at the gal on her phone
playing games by herself,
eating soup in the back.
The man by the window
hunched over a screen,
won’t lead me to grimace
or groan.
I’ll be happy to see him doing his work,
for like me, he’ll be eating alone.

A circle of women like some I have known
may be there.
Expensively casual, impressing their own
with pictures of trips
and brags on their kids
and chatter of marriages now on the skids.
But I won’t care.
I won’t be prone
to notice such gaggles while I eat alone.

But two, just two, in an intimate zone
with eyes for each other
over salads and scones,
will hardly notice I’m there.
I doubt they will see
that the food on my tray is only for me.
But I’ll wonder what pleasures
between them have grown
in the months I’ve been learning
to live alone.

Even worse, don’t let me see
couples enthralled by their phones,
ignoring each other with mindless scrolls
through tidbits and news bytes
bad for their souls.
“Look up!
Drink in every minute like these. 
with the one you love most,
before the chance flees
to revel in sharing a life just your own,”
I’ll want to shout at them,
repressing a moan
for moments now lost to me, sitting alone.

Let me be glad about how I have shown
my resilience
at coping in ways I’d not known.
Counting my blessings, enjoying the fun
of days spent with others pursuing the sun.
Let me keep smiling at promises kept
by those who never will know how
I’ve wept
over all I have lost
and how I am facing
the step I’m embracing
at Panera today:
Choosing to eat there alone.