Apr 2016
They both rest beneath the tent of thin, glossed books shaped like shoe boxes. Sitting in silence beneath the bolded print: "GRAPHIC NOVELS", wedged between teen fiction and romance.
The boy laid flat like the horizon with a hand folded and tucked beneath his chin. The father crisscross applesauced. They both wore sport jackets, matching patch of dark hair, oval face, a watery constellation of freckles.
I listened to them talk while my book sat opened on my lap; a storefront deli at noon. I did not read the words-I read their dialogue as it bubbled through the air and popped. With chartreuse vision, when dad explained to son Marvel and DC and heroes that are heroes in the laminated skins.
Perhaps heroes don't only wear capes, but leather sport jackets and orange baseball caps. Maybe they sit a bookstore on Friday night. Maybe they're called "pops". Heros who can sit in comfortable silence with nothing but time and a copy of Little Marvel.
The boy laid flat like the horizon with a hand folded and tucked beneath his chin. The father crisscross applesauced. They both wore sport jackets, matching patch of dark hair, oval face, a watery constellation of freckles.
I listened to them talk while my book sat opened on my lap; a storefront deli at noon. I did not read the words-I read their dialogue as it bubbled through the air and popped. With chartreuse vision, when dad explained to son Marvel and DC and heroes that are heroes in the laminated skins.
Perhaps heroes don't only wear capes, but leather sport jackets and orange baseball caps. Maybe they sit a bookstore on Friday night. Maybe they're called "pops". Heros who can sit in comfortable silence with nothing but time and a copy of Little Marvel.
