copyright@2021 will maguire Late one night in Little Italy, I was 2 six packs in and stumbling home up the stairs. Passing an open door I saw this old Italian man all of about 50. His wife had been hit by a bus on Fordham Road that summer. Killed. When he got the call he just dropped the phone. Never said a word. He went silent the way some men do, trying to make himself deaf to grief by ignoring it, by vowing to never speak it and never listen to its roar... like the sound of the el train each night. So he stopped answering the phone and and then his door. Tried to make himself unreachable to grief. And he went to work each day, praying with his sweat that the ache in his back might someday quiet the ache in his heart. That night he had the radio on some oldies station, standing at the stove, the smell of onion and sausage and peppers in the air. As I passed it started to play The Very Thought of You. ‘The mere idea of you...the longing here for you....the very thought of you’
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