I like that you exist

outside the shop, on the sidewalk, there are three men in dark-blue suits discussing where to go for lunch. i watch them. i look at how they almost radiate physical fitness and self-confidence and even condescendence. i drink my coffee from a tiny white cup, thinking i will never have their wealth, their athleticism or their assertiveness.
and as my eyes follow them, a fragment from a raymond carver story comes to mind:

“And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”

i sometimes fall back on this passage and i really, really want to be able to take it as a reassurance of sorts. what else would there be left? “To call myself beloved…” was i? am i? will i be?

i look at them going away, talking on their phones and stroking their well trimmed beards, the back flaps of their suit jackets wagging in the mild spring wind.