Sunday, January 14, 2018

Of Soup and Soap

How much energy does it take to keep
awake? The waitress serves me a baguette,
her apron caked with crumbs and eyelids
smiling with mascara and drowsiness.
Perhaps she is dopey. It is unlikely but possible.

The long bread tastes of buttered sweetness;
the chef's battered his soul into the spread.
The waitress is the messenger delivering
soul, buttered, its taste leavened by the
hunger of waiting.

I thank her, I try to thank her
with upraised eyes, eyes creased
with wrinkles of gratitude fashioned
out of a protest against drowsiness.

Alas, she goes back into her auto-
maton mode, fetching cults
of patrons their cutlery and cuisine,
speaking with hands scarred possibly
by soup and soap.

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