they’d die
but not before this restaurant
where a woman talks to me
about how the food is alright
but not the best
so that we’d have to go
somewhere else sometime else
and I nod and laugh
about some story I’ve heard before
that I couldn’t exactly retell
because the words were all wrong
and while I’d leak soup and grins
like sewage weeping from a sink
a man would fall in from the outside
dumb from drink
legs loose spaghetti
the smell of wet newspaper
and he’d sludge over to a table
while needing a shave
and needing someone to tell him
he did
and that he couldn’t stand on the meals
because others were sitting down trying to eat
looking up at him
scared and hungry
one foot in the salad
another in the steak
and he’d spit something about being
sorry about the disturbance
and he’d cry
beautiful green eyes going
onto the dinner plates
the salt soaking his sorrow
the agape mouths breathing his life
unmoving
unwavering
and swaying to some beat
secret to him
a little song that’d sing
only on occasions when
it shouldn’t
because he’d need a shave
and to move his heel away from the fork
and to stop crying
because he was diluting the wine
which was no doubt expensive
and he did
after taking a swig of him and it
probably hoping for more it than him
and the waiter apologized
as though she had been the man
who melted and made my night
before the other girl with the stories
that were never fully told
tried to do the same
with her legs
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