Frank’s Place on Milton Road

I shove the door open at this café on Milton Road, the handle all chewed up with rust bites and pits. the place reeks of burnt bacon and old grease, and it hits you in the gut, hard.

“Coffee, black, eight sugars, please.”

I stare out the smeared window. across the street there’s a hardware store, neon sign flickering half-dead between shovels and brooms stacked like cheap coffins. sleet coming down mean, people marching in their little soldier lines on the ice, heads down, dying slow.

I dig in my coat pocket — crumbs and lint and coins that feel like they’ve been through every loser’s hand in town. the machine behind the counter groans like it’s got cirrhosis. the cook flips eggs with a spatula gone black as his lungs.

“And a bacon roll, please.”

it’s for the man outside, folded up between cardboard that once held oranges from Kenya and apples from Israel. the fruit’s already inside, lined up warm and shining for tomorrow’s customers. he’s out there on the empty box it came in. the apples get to sleep indoors; he doesn’t.

I know he likes his coffee. figure the bacon might buy him one warm hour, one more night got through.

another goddamn winter, trying to kill the ones it can.

Kenyan oranges
sleep warm behind the glass—
the man in the box, outside.