Early Bird Special

A wrinkled, hunched over woman walks into the diner painfully, slowly………
She takes a moment to smell the heavy grease in the air,
An oily, humid stench that coats the ceiling in a yellow frosting.
The fuchsia neon signs flicker in the diner window like a strobe flashing images
Of her youth and a blurred reflection of what she has become.

She dons a crumpled, cotton flowered moo-moo
That is faded and worn from years of being washed.
It matches her long, discolored silver hair,
Neatly curled and folded under a gaudy silk scarf.
Strings of wiry coils peek out underneath
The brim of fabric around her forehead.

Cheeks caked with rouge, she wears too much lipstick.
She has missed most of her pruned mouth upon application.
She still carries pictures of her grandchildren in her dress pocket
That she takes out to show strangers.
Her once porcelain fingers are now overrun with rheumatoid arthritis.
Her ears can barely make out the musical notes from the diner’s jukebox.

But she is not alone.

Accompanying her this muggy summer afternoon is her husband.
Old and tired from an extensive laboring life of love,
Children and climbing the ladder of his life.
His red, frayed suspenders are pulling up his black slacks past his waist,
Revealing his stripped trouser socks and worn, brown orthopedic shoes.
He hobbles forward, one short, jerky step at a time.
He has a diminutive smile on his wrinkled face camouflaged by his sagging rosy cheeks.

He is wrapped around her right arm like a snake.
Her left arm is holding onto his left arm.
They support each other like a woven pretzel ….
To another Sunday meal.

The young, impatient hostess pops her chewing gum.
She waits for the older couple to finish their slow tango to her podium.
Everyone in the diner takes notice of the painfully long ritual,
A slow tango of decaying flesh.

But the young hostess says nothing, for she will one day be the woman
With her knee-high pantyhose bunched down around her ankles,
Swishing in her bloated body like a canteen of water as she walks.

She seats them at the nearest booth for the sound makes her cringe.
The couple crams into the same side of the red leather booth.
They don’t need menus, for they order the same thing every Sunday.
The fish special…baked, not fried with vegetables instead of french fries,
Soup, instead of salad because the lettuce gets stuck in his fake, yellowing teeth.
The woman helps cut up the fish for her older companion
Whose hands shake and rattle the forks and knives against the warm plates.
He patiently watches her and looks at her adoringly.
The couple eats slowly, methodically and silently in each other’s company.
They gaze at each other and smile in ominous ways.

They have come all this way today.
The years have come and gone,
Passing through the stations of life like a freight train
And finally they have melded into one living breath.

All this way, every day,

All this way, every day could be their last, so they eat early.