Flipping tiny pages
She strolls to the table
Apologizing with her quiet eyes.
"Do you need a menu?"
Something on my face tells her
I seem sure of my decision.
There's a hole in her smile
That hangs down to her heart.
"I'll have the chicken fried steak."
I thought I really said, "What's wrong?"
Subserviently, yet sincerely, she is sweet,
Like it's been beaten into her.
"I'll have that right out to you"
Her invisible mental interpreter yelled,
"I wish I could tell you everything."
The order book closes.
Obligations disappear into an apron.
The kitchen draws her in like a space ship.
A hologram of her sadness remains.
Until her lingering spirit is torn by
A gray-hair parade displacing the haze.
Why did I sit next to the bathroom?
Incontinence breeds strange bedfellows,
And I'm feeling more pissy by the minute.
I question my choice of eateries
In demographics, and relevance.
But a 5.89 lunch special trumps pride.
My table in pre-gorge state
Holds electronic slates
And this rigid collection of organizing tools.
Moses' brother shuffles by.
"Is that one of them tablets?"
As I imagine him holding the original ones.
The waitress sidels in, balancing plates
With stuff covered in gravy,
A mis-shapen roll in a basket,
Her reconstructed grin
Not pasted on quite as straight
As the first approach.
The old man displays his yellow teeth
Waiting for her to dismiss herself.
So she does.
"How do ya like that thing," he says.
"It's my brain," I tort.
We fake laugh together.
White coffee cups appear like spring fungus
On every table near me
She is placing and replacing them all
...Again and again
Like she needs a reason
To be nearby.
Then she fills the jellies, and butter pats
Overflowing in make-do bowls heaping
Beyond full, tumbling as little avalanches.
She picks each packet as they fall
In a never-ending fruity fruitless failure
That frames the fabric of her fears.
Through the silhouette of
The antique man
Her hand trembles as she loses faith.
From his wrinkled mouth
Dusty words settled on my head,
"A guy just walked up and shot my son."
His skinny finger pointed like a gun.
"I know how you feel," I offered,
Recently lost my son, too."
His eyes turned from inward to outward.
Patted me on the shoulder.
"Bless you, boy."
"A parent should never see
Their child in a casket."
And he walked away.
I left a $5 tip on a $6 tab,
As if that would lessen her pain,
Or my empathy.