6:35 AM EST - Feb. 03, 2004
over hard
couldn't sleep so i took a walk in the cinnamon coffee brown of the florida morning and did an inventory of the indigenous trees and my life near the steel amber of 4:30AM. and in the orchestra of names -- overcup oak, tupelo, camphor and sweetgum, sugar maple, devil wood -- there were frogs and all their ribbit-chirping, and how after all that i wanted (to talk to my wife and son but then i decided for) breakfast at Waffle House. it wasn't so much the eggs that were over hard as the people: the old man at the counter, with the blue popeye anchor on his left arm that browned from too much trucking. and Sonia, who said she had four kids that loved to poke her eyes out when she slept during the day, and how she spoke of herself as Queen of the Tightwads and how i drank my coffee as i heard her story about the tall oak door at the Holiday Inn and how it struck her back like a linebacker and the four days she was in the hospital on tubes and drugs and how all she could think about was the stale yellow cigarette she left in her jeans and when they finally let her out she lit a match even before she saw her kids and how she looked at me and said i'm lying, you know and i said no you're not. your eyes didn't move. you said the whole story with a straight face, like the way my mama would talk to me when she had to ask for money and the place was quiet and i heard the sizzle of the sausage on the griddle and Sonia filled my coffee up again with a fresh brew and Laura said she tells that story all the time and i looked back at Sonia and she was quiet and i left her five bucks tip for a seven dollar breakfast and she said no, that's too much and i said i miss my son. she asked me do you smoke? and i said not in a long time so i went outside with her and sat a spell until Laura said Sonia, get your ass in here. night ends, morning comes. the third day.
