Breaking Bread with Strangers
When the stranger came to my house, he brought bread. “Here,” he said, “You take it.” And then he sat down at the dinner table, waiting to be served. I placed the bread on a board. My wife brought in the brisket and potatoes. My daughter carried in a platter of braised carrots and roasted broccoli. “Why did you come here,” I asked. “I saw a light burning in the window and thought you might be generous people.” “We are generous people,” I said. My wife smiled with her beautiful lips. My daughter smiled also, a young version of her mother. I said a prayer asking for health and prosperity for all of us. The stranger said “Amen,” bowing his head. His shirt was faded and frayed like his knotty beard. I picked up the bread and tried to break off a piece, but it wouldn’t break. It was hard like wood. “You can’t break this bread,” he said. “You can’t eat it.” He took it from me and placed it on the tablecloth, and for a long time while he filled his plate and began eating, we stared at it with admiration as though it were a sacred gift.
Jeff Friedman has published nine collections of poetry and prose, including The Marksman, and The House of Grana Padano (Pelekinesis, April 2022), cowritten with Meg Pokrass. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship and numerous other awards and prizes