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Yet another diner, yet another written account in need of a place. A setting.

She sets her pen down on the cream-colored paper of her “writer’s notebook”. Re-reads the words (see above) she just committed to that cream-colored paper. Once committed, the words stand alone, rightly or wrongly or neutrally.

Kind of like Joshua.

A grimace. 

No matter. 

The morning is bright. 

The diner smells morning: eggs, bacon, burnt toast, hard coffee.

Sunlight pours through the wide glass windows. Floods in, like a well-crafted metaphor floods a tabla rosa (or something fancy sounding like that). 

Damn.

She should write that in her notebook. But the muse leaves her, swept away on the dust of protein powder and squat thrusts.

And she mind-thinks aloud of life and tires, and the rotation that goes round and round and round like that lighthouse’s light in that Dickey poem. 

Yet, yesterday. 

At the local tire shoppe. 

She was waiting. New tires. New treads.

Siped, ma’am?

And she considered those tiny slits.

And he walked in: 

Fashionable jacket, form fitting black slacks, matching Cole Haan shoes and belt.

A smile.

A beard.

Dark eyes.

She contained herself. Stole glances. 

He was older. But, appealed.

And we are here as on a darkling plain…

She coughed.

Reality convulsed. 

And her tires mounted, pressure’d…

Closes her eyes. 

Visions them out on the deserted plain, standing, hand-in-hand, witness to the Last Sunrise.

And behind them, that damn mule sighs.