They owned it most when they didn’t
belong, waiting like mental patients against
the door, headlights smacking their eyes
in passing. The wait staff still
didn’t know their names and they didn’t
notice. He always paid and she always
wiped the rim of the ketchup bottle, hating to leave
evidence of appetite. They sat,
staring out windows polluted
with breath, he thinking he could do better, she
thinking she could do better, neither believing
this Union Street diner, its tic of blue
neon scabbing the sky, blinking
Diner blinking Open blinking Diner
blinking Open, could last another month,
gimping each hour away with low rent
biscuits and bacon grease. But it does.
It lasts. It goes on forever.
