The fork lift

I always pass the fork lift driver on my way to work. He cannot speak, or else he just doesn't want to. I smile at him as I pass, and he waves back. "It is possible, since we know one another only by way of ritual," I reflect, "that, by extension, I do not have the use of my hands."

When I tell people, I say: "He has a sensitive, intelligent face," and I stop there a moment, as though this somehow proves or contradicts something. And then, because I have to say something more: "It seems to me that, in his lack of language, he still holds fluidly within him the potential to be a murderer -- or perhaps a saint."