Dispatches from a Breakfast Joint #60

We came all this way

sleep wiped

clothes unwrinkled

wallet, check, keys, check

car purring

seats heated

To sit in the occupied silence of

third spaces

the great good places

clinking coffee cups

pleases and thank yous

no, no more

was everything alright?

yes, can you believe what she said?

indistinct murmur of bodies nourishing

falling

in &

out

of gossip

that binds us

We came all this way

to be seated

smiling

across a chasm of

raspberry, strawberry, marmalade

coffee vapor dissipating

untouched water glasses

cream stacked like circus trapeze artists

tipping towards catastrophe

to look down

and scroll through

other people's lives

Dispatches from a Breakfast Joint # 57

black coffee

pours itself, smiles wide

her pot fresh

Salvageable

wherein

like irony

someone grows

The last sheet of tin roofing slides into place like a word I've never learned. The soft patter of fall rain ceases, except where it dribbles, through holes torn into tin sky by the reversal of screws. Repurposed like old tropes in noir detective novels: rough around the edges but serviceable. Standing in a rusted halo of relief - from the rain, from a sense of failure, from the stagnation of empty fun house mirror pages pulling my reflection out like unspooled taffy. I reach into the pinprick of screws in rain heavy overall pockets; one screw into hand thumb the other between my lips and climb the ladder again.