Omega

- Another poem from forever ago. Again, it's more short story/literary style. Comments are always appreciated! I hope you guys like it! -

On Sundays we had a beef stew special that came with a soup, salad, bread, coffee, and dessert for less than what I got paid an hour.
It was a magnet for cheap people,
people who were fussy and mean and bitter and hated to tip.
Their coffee was too hot or their bread wasn’t buttered or they wanted
their leftovers separated by color so they could take it home
to their lazy and lovable cats.
I despised Sundays.

But sometimes on Sundays she came in, and sometimes I told myself it wasn’t as bad as it could get for someone. So I smiled.

She always requested to sit at my table.
She smelled of expensive youthful wedding proposals
And so I called her Madame Rocha.
She spoke sweetly, as if afraid to disturb with her raised voice,
and once said I reminded her of her daughter back in the old country,
back in Serbia, a place and child now long forgotten and gone.

I always had to wait patiently with pen in hand while she ordered,
tried desperately to make up her mind about what kind of soup she wanted today,
as if she were trying to remember what it tasted like a long time ago, but couldn’t quite grasp the memory.

Sometimes she would just sit there without ordering anything, just staring timidly
out the window, her dry fingers wrapped tightly
around an icy cup of tea, as if she were afraid it would abandon her, too.

Madame Rocha always sat alone, a strange comparison
to the other old couples who would come in
groups of eight to ten, calling it their “lunch date”.

You could tell she was brought up among expensive china cups and private
school teachers by the way she sat in her chair, her back impressively
straight and her body worn out by age and abandonment, but her chin still
lifted in a proud defiance.

After she was gone it seemed as if she had never been there.
The silverware was untouched and perfectly
clean, the napkin was always neatly folded and no matter
how many times she had wiped her perfectly red lips with it, it was spotless.

If it hadn’t been for the thin mark of red lipstick
on her tea cup you would have never known she had even existed
I wondered sometimes if she did this on purpose, as if being treated
like a ghost had somehow made her become one.