By Jen Frantz
After midnight, I smoke a cigarette
on the balcony. Across the parking lot,
and through the trees, there is a diner.
I used to go there and eat pie, lemon
meringue, with a thin fork. The server
had married a cop, and then divorced
him. These days, the cop couldn’t
walk, and they didn’t know why.
I brought a book with me, some
thing heavy I wouldn’t read. I just
liked to see it sitting on the table,
pliant and willing. After midnight,
the diner is closed, but the OPEN
sign still shines. The windows are
dark all but for the red light,
brazen, a little cheeky. I know it’s
a mistake, and someone forgot
to turn it off. But I like to think
there’s someone there, some
security, sitting in front of
the pies, which are slowly
drooping, and if I went there
in my pajamas, smelling of
smoke, she would walk towards
me and nod. You had a dream,
she’d say, I know what that’s like.
Jen Frantz is a college dropout from Ohio. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Drift, Fence, and Bennington Review, among others. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was poetry editor of The Iowa Review.
