Waitress
There was a café I haunted
at the wrong hour for breakfast.
The bacon chewed like old leather,
the toast came damp as bad news,
the coffee was burnt past apology.
The table wobbled like a conscience.
None of it mattered.
She was there.
Apron tied low.
Pencil behind one ear.
The kind of face that made a man
forgive crockery, plumbing, God, empire.
She’d say, “Big breakfast? Large black?”
same as yesterday,
and still it struck me
like a hymn in a ruined church.
You’d say there were better cafés.
There were.
Hotter bacon, cleaner cups,
coffee made by someone who cared,
which I found I couldn’t forgive.
I never asked her name.
Didn’t want reality
coming in with its muddy boots
to ruin a perfect arrangement.
This was a romance built on ritual:
she says hello,
she brings the plate,
she tells me what I spent,
I leave owing more than the bill.
The food stayed bad.
The table never found religion.
Still I came back.
Because sometimes a life is held together
by a waitress in a tired café
saying, “There you go, darl,”
like it costs her nothing.