The Diner on Poinsett Street

She sat at the lonely diner table slowly absorbing the mundane lives around her while making up stories about each patron of the diner who were sharing her same window of time.

The middle aged man in the thick, camouflage coat sipping on his coffee with six packs of sugar mixed into it had actually not been hunting all day. She thought he was wearing it to prove a point. He’s a “man’s man.” One who’s had his heart broken too many times by the same Darlene he’s known since high school. So he spends his nights in the strip club down by highway, and his days pretending to be a hunter, but really he just drinks. He drinks until he’s sure the pain is gone this time only to be greeted by the ghost of Darlene and a hangover in the morning. Then when he grows tired of it all, when none of it satisfies his dusty soul, he comes to the diner alone. And drinks his coffee with six sugars. Wondering why he isn’t the man he thought he’d be.

Then there is the girl who looked about her age. Her long, dark hair covered her bare shoulders. Glitter and mascara have permanently taken their place under her gray eyes. She didn’t notice it anymore, as it was better than the dark circles her mother was always going on about. It’s not the only thing she’s ridiculed for. A doctor she had said. You’re going to be a doctor.

“No daughter of mine is going to depend on a man for anything. You gotta make your own money in this fucked up world. The only person who has you, is you.”

Those words have been the white noise in her head for years as she had watched man after man leave her mother dry. As she was a witness to her own mother’s descent to a personal kind of hell. One where needles pierced her veins and bottles of unknown pills lived on her nightstand. One where her dinners consisted of a bag of peanuts and expired orange juice. She never forgets the one night when a kind woman bought her a burger after seeing her wander the sidewalks of downtown in the rain.

“The Lord spoke to me and told me you need this more than I do.”

The cold rain bounced off her only jacket and glued her hair to her face. She saw a glimmer in the woman’s eyes. She couldn’t decide if she was being genuine or if she was just trying to fill her own empty void. She decided that she didn’t care and took the offer. She didn’t even thank the woman, but she had already walked away anyways.

“You’ll get fat eating shit like that. No man wants a fat woman,” her mother had said after she tried so carefully to sneak the food into her room.

“I thought you always said that I don’t need a man,” she replied quietly. More to herself than to her mother. But she had heard anyway. It’s the only time she had heard anything that she’s said.

“You do. You ain’t making shit for yourself.”

So now she comes to the diner after her shift. She recognizes the camouflage man but is too tired to care. She stares blankly at the burger she ordered. Wondering if it would really be worth it to eat it.

Finally, there is the old man who sits next to the jukebox. Donned in his plaid flannel shirt and faded blue jeans that his wife told him to get rid of years ago. But they were comfortable, and just the right amount of worn-in that made them feel like an old friend. Regardless, he missed her nagging about them. They had spent fifty long, and happy years together. He had met her when he went to college up north, back when the world was black and white, and time moved much slower. So he had thought. She had been the light of his life. While his navy buddies spent their time lusting for the women of the islands they docked on, it was her who he kept a photo of in the pocket of his undershirt. Always close to his heart. Her golden ringlets and doe eyes beckoned him to come home to her every time.

They had grown old together. The ultimate achievement of every relationship it seemed. They lost babies and had babies. They watched their home turn into a museum of their life together. She lived and moved within the walls. And now he can’t stand to be there alone. Now it’s dark and he sees shadows of her in every corner. He turns on the one lamp he keeps by her now faded and tattered photograph. Her ringlets and doe eyes beckoning him to come home every time. She is a ghost within him that he cannot expel. If he walks through those old doors, she haunts him.

He turns to drop a quarter into the jukebox, and Doris Day’s “Dream a Little Dream of Me” fills the loneliness of the diner. And for a moment, she’s there with him. Just as young and beautiful as she always was. He loses himself in a past memory while his coffee grows cold on the table.

So what is she doing at the diner analyzing all of these lives? All of these shells of people that she thought she knew in her mind. Generating these stories gave her an escape from her own. Her ghosts didn’t matter when she was comforted by these imaginary strangers.

She was waiting for someone. Someone who would never come. She knew that, but she waited for him anyway. Everyone in the diner wanted to be loved, and she couldn’t help but fall under the same category. He was someone who she knew could make it all go away. The constant buzzing in her mind was always soothed when she spoke to him. He flooded her heart and soul, making a home there that he didn’t live in. So it was empty. She was empty.

He had told her that she was beautiful, and her mind was beautiful, but she needed to learn how to love herself. She had to learn how to be enough. He was right about that. He was right about most things. But still she waited.

“You finished, sweetie,” the waitress asked.

She stared at the half eaten sandwich. The one she ordered every night she came here. She was wondering exactly how to answer the question. Was she finished? Would she finally go home and give up the charade? Would she finally come to terms with the fate she set for herself? The waitress looked at her as if she knew exactly what was running through her mind. Although she knew that there was no way she could know. She was just romanticizing things again.

Finally after an eternity of pondering the question, she answered.

“Yes,” she said, “I’m finished.”

The waitress took the plate and disappeared into the back void of the diner. The girl gathered her coat and her belongings, taking one last look at the patrons of the diner. They had all gathered here under the same curtain of loneliness. The same heavy curtain of exhaustion and broken love stories. At least here they could band together in a familiar silence; unknowingly playing a small part in each other’s lives in order to forget. They were all ghosts here.

The bell on the door rang, abruptly interrupting her train of thought. A stranger was coming in. Perhaps another lost soul seeking comfort in a warm cup of coffee. Perhaps it was someone to take her place. She was placing her money on the table when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned, and for the first time in quite a long time, a sigh of relief exited from her being. And a smile adorned her tired face.