The Regular
"You want your usual, honey?"
sung in the lilting tones
words take in the mouths of nurses
trying not to break bones with
the sticks and stones of reality.
The sing-song honey, dear, and darling
of order pad hospitality and concern,
just like mom used to make
but made to order with industrial tools
and saccharine by the pound in cardboard boxes.
The egg order repeated with the softness
of "you have cancer," or
"your wife has passed on."
The muffling of truth in the cotton of care.
They believe they are taking care of him,
these morning orderlies with greasy hands
and waffle batter lapels
offering kind hearted questions
like a menu of compassion,
secular call and response diner style
as if they could be tallied up
and accounted for in the tip.
The hummingbirds that flittered around his coffee
chirping their apologies to his age
assumed he was lonely.
And the cooks and customers smiled and rumored,
patting themselves on the back for their kindness.
The pitying handshake offered
the liver spotted skin of the uncouth
dressed in the earlier cut of a shabby suit.
The eggs weren't better than he could make at home.
The sausage not as good as his grandmother's.
He didn't care about their smoke break stories
or storage room emotions,
and the river of faces didn't make him feel
less moored.
The banging pans, and shrill shuffling
clink of industrial flatware.
The rhythmic mechanical tide swell
of the Hobart dishwasher.
The shouted orders and coarse tones
of anything that wasn't the silence of home,
the patronizing whispers,
the drone of news show talking heads.
They warmed and refilled their palliative care,
but he never spoke.
No easy reminiscences could soften the blow
they were too young to hear,
and too unready to feel.
He had gone beyond their understanding of loneliness,
their youthful grip on isolation,
their middle-aged imaginings of regret and loss,
their storybook conceptions of decrepitude.
He, with nothing to convey but the temperature of eggs,
the count of meat strips,
the color of coffee.
Whether today juice is an accouterment.
The rest was already said,
left in a world of the dead and gone
to forget or to hold as they might.
Past even a need for remembering,
or outliving those who could.
The only thing he left behind
beside the cost of breakfast and a tip
was a slip of paper in shivering cursive script
like ancient text to keyboard eyes
of his daughter's name and number
unused but not forgotten.
One day his regular seat would go unclaimed
and his eggs uncooked.
Some day he wouldn't look out the window at passing cars
and listen to the melancholy mockery at 2/3 time,
synchronized to his silverware shuffling
and paper napkin placement of thoughts.
His regular was a countdown.
A dated newspaper proof of life
delivered to the world every morning,
so that someone would know to call the number
and send the cars,
before his room began to smell,
and he ruined his favorite chair,
and he left a mess for his daughter to clean.
