The waitress hands me a glass of something honey-coloredwith a violet floating on the surface.
No charge, she says, her lips brushing my burning ear.How can I understand?
Perhaps she is lonely, so she has concocted a gift for her polite regular,slicing peaches to kill time.
Or perhaps I resemble her father, so she has decided to poison me.You must forgive me these daydreams.
I remember men like me must ask forgiveness.
The drink tastes like chamomile and stonefruit. The ice melts softly.She is far away now,
far away, across the small bright room, taking a rare order of the permanent special,pancakes with cherry jelly.
The glass is warm. As I tip the last of it towards me, dreaming up meanings,the violet curves off my lip
like a shy lover or the skin of boiled milk. For a long momentI do nothing,
my face slack as a caught child’s, my loose mouth hanging purple-petaled and sweet;I am forgetting
the many things I did wrong, the fewer things I put right,the name on her apron.