A generous soft presence greets you at the counter
Tempting you with sweet pies and curried chicken salad.
Her life story, full of woe and triumph, pours out like thick coffee
As she rings you up and takes the cash from your hand.
You sit at a tiny round table on a wobbly chair
While you sup on tasty morsels and sip sweet brown café,
thinking you have found a little piece of heaven.
After you thank her and take your leave,
She retreats to the room behind her kitchen and wails
Among the brooms and mops and blank ledgers
- she will never use them.
She empties her sobs into the dark, convulsing,
Counting the lost loves and the mother with a heart of stone,
The friends who walked away when she most needed them–
she got them back, she made them pay.
The shop bell jingles and the glass rattles with the closing door.
She dabs her eyes, smoothes her hair
and glides through the bright kitchen, purring
at the gentleman in front of the counter,
“What’s your pleasure?”
