70% wine

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