John Brixter Tino

AT THE DINER ON ROUTE 4

I came here to be held by the vinyl booth, its cracked red mouth still warm
from whoever sat before me. The waitress pours coffee without asking.
She has done it twenty thousand times and her wrist knows the arc, the exact
moment to pull back. I watch the truckers fold their maps into squares too small
for the distances they carry. Their hands are thick with diesel and the particular
grief of men who sleep in cabs. The pie case revolves: cherry, coconut cream,
a lemon meringue browning at the peaks like summer hills after wildfire.
I have been driving since the argument. Since the door closed with its ordinary
click and the hallway swallowed my shoes. Here the sugar dispenser pours
its bright stream into the dark lake of my cup and I watch it sink like a small,
deliberate act of faith. The cook rings his bell. Two plates slide across the steel
pass, eggs trembling, toast cut into triangles because someone decided once,
long ago, that was the proper shape of morning. I want to tell the woman in
the next booth that her daughter’s laugh is saving me a little. That the sound
enters my ribs like light through a cracked door. I do none of it. I drink. I pay.
I leave four dollars on the table, which is more than the coffee cost and less
than what was given. The parking lot holds my car the way a palm
holds a stone it intends to skip across black water.