One night, nicked by Europeans who refused to hail a cab, shot by swarms of red wine and meat, the bartender spun up the volume on our joint-life soundtrack and I smiled, grinned, heartily laughed out the world.
I am en-gnarled, tangled, tied up in nostalgia-the most forlorn of forgetting, the ghosts of ghosts. For me, this is not rare but even at a restaurant, the blue one, the one on which I banked my wild waitress dreams.
I want to fold into words the less marginalized of memories, sashey of belted Brazilian music melting my ears, the soft freckles across Alice's nose, bent basement kisses, white waists, novel mentionings of moonlight.
It is the astronomist, with his misty eyes, who has kept me sane. The menagerie of futbol fans who have kept me fed. The washed, turquoise curtains that have blocked the burn of suns. Tin and wooden tables that have kept me strong. Broken stairs that have kept me startled--those stairs that laugh and trip, trickled with footsteps home.
When I close my eyes, I can smell granola and cranberries, almost crisp with dawn. I can taste fat slices of steak, melting cheese, crusted bread, cool arugula and whole curtains of coffee, stunning back my brawn. I can hear the assortment of music, soft blues, gypsy kings, feist and other feisty tunes, feel the blow of the fan, a torrid tickle at best.
It is all that I imagined and more, more, more.
The more is the key. The most. Never mild.
I love and hate waitressing, feel fire in my eyes these days. The repetition, monotony, murders my creativity. The cast of characters far superior to sentimental stories, perfectors of plots.
