'Neer

Jaundice light loafs to the painted wooden extremities, waxing the fake hanging plants, glassing up our eyes. We tap the tabletops dotted with stray coffee, sunk in booths the color of cheap crayons, forest green, the waitresses in uniforms of the same. A soda fountain erupts on and off and plates ring against plates as hot bottles of syrup, dark and swirling koa, thud in front of red-faced drunks. Their cackling scratches the ceiling and crystallizes overhead. Our discourse encased in unsteady glee, a tomb of laughter. Don, the manager with the Icelandic wife asks us to lift our feet so that he may mop, and we all begin to yawn over the whiteness of a gloom-glazed morning paling the pavement outside. Bills are paid, a pack of matches taken, and lit one by one on the empty interstate home.