An evening spent washing dishes
makes my hands thin and wrinkling
like tissue paper.
It’s ten o’clock.
Tonight each streetlight will
pop on one by one and
me and the guys who smoke out back
will watch owls drop from the trees
and sweep mice out of their holes.
Inside the pizza boils in the oven,
blistering up like pimples on elbows.
They can smell it from the doorstep
peeling the paint from the asphalt and
the huger gnaws and claws deep into the belly.
Onward the light crawls
trying to outshine the stars
and our Pizza Hut sign,
blazes a banner of glory to the highway.
I feel sick on gasoline and the cigarette breath
that clings to your apron.
No one can clean out the gutters
like you.
After the doors close
everyone hitchhikes  
to the Greyhound bus stop
nobly trying to stay awake
over the thousand miles home.