{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-post-js","path":"/11-10-26","result":{"data":{"contentfulPost":{"title":"AT THE DINER ON ROUTE 4","body":{"json":{"data":{},"content":[{"data":{},"content":[{"data":{},"marks":[],"value":"I came here to be held by the vinyl booth, its cracked red mouth still warm\nfrom whoever sat before me. The waitress pours coffee without asking.\nShe has done it twenty thousand times and her wrist knows the arc, the exact\nmoment to pull back. I watch the truckers fold their maps into squares too small\nfor the distances they carry. Their hands are thick with diesel and the particular\ngrief of men who sleep in cabs. The pie case revolves: cherry, coconut cream,\na lemon meringue browning at the peaks like summer hills after wildfire.\nI have been driving since the argument. Since the door closed with its ordinary\nclick and the hallway swallowed my shoes. Here the sugar dispenser pours\nits bright stream into the dark lake of my cup and I watch it sink like a small,\ndeliberate act of faith. The cook rings his bell. Two plates slide across the steel\npass, eggs trembling, toast cut into triangles because someone decided once,\nlong ago, that was the proper shape of morning. I want to tell the woman in\nthe next booth that her daughter’s laugh is saving me a little. That the sound\nenters my ribs like light through a cracked door. I do none of it. I drink. I pay.\nI leave four dollars on the table, which is more than the coffee cost and less\nthan what was given. The parking lot holds my car the way a palm\nholds a stone it intends to skip across black water.","nodeType":"text"}],"nodeType":"paragraph"}],"nodeType":"document"}},"author":"John Brixter Tino","type":"11-10-26","justifyText":false,"width":null,"nextTitleAndAuthor":"\"Ballad for the Crop Circle\" by Gwendolyn Hanson","nextSlug":"/11-3-26","bio":{"json":{"data":{},"content":[{"data":{},"content":[{"data":{},"marks":[],"value":"John Brixter Tino is a son of a fisherman and is a person with disabilities. He was raised in Perez, Quezon, Philippines. He currently serves as a part-time instructor at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at De La Salle University. His writings have received recognition from the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and other award-giving bodies in the Philippines. His works have been published in Red Ogre Review, Philippine Star, Philippine Collegian, Mekong Review, and TLDTD Journal, among other anthologies. ","nodeType":"text"}],"nodeType":"paragraph"}],"nodeType":"document"}}}},"pageContext":{"slug":"/11-10-26"}}}