Nicelle Davis

Denny’s All Nighters

The server brings more coffee. I drink to keep going past the three a.m. blackouts. I cut the arm off my mother and feed it to my father, spoon my brother’s eyes out to boil them in a pot, until I wake up in a table-top lake of drool, my face imprinted with the creases of used napkins.

I quick-jump back to a sitting position. The server brings more coffee. I take out a picture of my nine-month-old son. He grows faster than I have time for. I asked my husband to give me the Cliff Notes version of how we are doing. We’re not divorcing. We’re not separating. We’re not far from the possibility of either. The server brings more coffee.

I have a fight with myself about the use of definite articles. A life. The life. All I ever wanted was to love well. I rip all the things I love to pieces and rearrange them with words. What I can’t get right, I try to make right on the page.

I nail poems like lost/reward signs to telephone poles—distribute them like evangelical flyers—tuck them under windshield wipers in parking lots—beg others to hold what I love within them and keep it safe from how I love to love. I hardly sleep anymore. I drink more coffee.