Harry bends over the grill,
beefy with years of drink
and culled anger,
scrubbing until silver shines,
a bullet waiting for my shift.

He believes if the French Toast is perfect,
she will appear in a halo of steam,
peacoat and Mary Janes,
ready to forgive the life they never had.

Outside Brother Juniper’s,
Peachtree Street is a kingdom
of late century's lost:
druggies, rent boys, drag queens,
pimps preaching Jesus
to the homeless in Piedmont Park.
The smell of grease stitches it all together.

Inside, fluorescent light
makes faces soft as wet clay,
ready to be remade by morning.
French fries sizzle like whips,
blintzes bleed cherry onto chipped plates,

and Tati, round as a blessing,
delivers soup to the sobbing girl
whose mascara becomes a confession.

I clock in,
busting knuckles and boots,
young, stupid,
just trying to keep up with him.
I know he wants her to return.
I know she won’t.
I know he’s getting older.

I watch Harry’s grace and sweat,
watching the city believe
in one last plate of salvation.

At dawn,
he’ll stumble across the street,
feed the jukebox Ray Charles,
and search the sidewalks
for her red hair in every stranger.

Sometimes you feel like a flower in a glass vase
decorating the center of a booth in a rundown diner
surrounded by coffee cup stains and burger grease
and accompanied by a hundred wearied faces
that come and pass, blurs in the middle of the night,
the fluorescent light of a single bulb that slowly burns out
the only shining source, mucky water your one food supply,
alone, carefully shriveling away forgotten, but other times
you're the diner, the trusty booth, a shimmering light
on a otherwise cavernous, empty road
in the middle of nowhere, a guardian,
always there waiting to help the exhausted
on their journey, wherever that may be.