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Lennie's on Tenth


[Today's Napowrimo prompt was to describe a place. This is where it took me.]

Lennie's on Tenth
First our husbands or wives left us
Or we left them
Or there was a long Ice Age
Or there was too much yelling
There were kids, or there weren’t
They were little, or big
And we drove through the pothole-pocked parking lot
And we sat around the little tables turned sideways
Talking the things
Until they smashed the building next door
Then they gloriously paintbombed the walls
And then, they
It’s hard to write it
The daily and weekly beers
The wrong-brewed teas
The pizzas on thrones
Anyway, I’m telling it wrong
First I met Heather
Or Heather met me
And I started the group
Or she started the group
Or we started it together
Me and Heather
And Lennie’s was just where we happened to sit in a booth
No, at a table I mean, but it was in a corner, so it felt a little
Booth-y
That first week we flirted in a girl-flirty way with our waitress
Said we’d be back, always
And then we were.
Every Monday, straight shot up Jordan, down Tenth
Past the bubble-tea kiosk into the treacherous lot
And into the dark side of the bar
Where we sat, and turned the tables to make space
And waited
And talked
And our people came and found us. Polka-dot scarf on the table
The signal -
And stories, we told our stories
He said this, she wrote that, I found out, I can’t believe it, can you believe it
We always believed it
We still do
Me with the timer, seven minutes, now talk
Sounds harsh but we focused, more time if you need it
Around us the pizzas, strombolis too I think, the salads
I don’t even know what everyone else drank but for me it was tricky
Alcohol no thanks, tea wrong flavor, too tepid, juice too many calories
Diet? the only thing Diet is Coke, all night up
But us at the tables, four of us, seven, eight, thirteen
Behind us the bar, above us the music, was there a TV?
Sometimes there was screaming. Usually straining to hear
But the point is. We kept coming
Straight from work, from therapy, from the gym, from the kids
Straight from pain, shock, relief, numbness
Straight through that blasted bumpy treacherous lot
To talk. To each other. At Lennie’s.
And then they tore down the building next door.
And it was strange to drive up and see it blasted blank like that.
But we kept coming.
And then the walls were filled with loud, final art
And we sat under them and kept eating, drinking, and talking.
With our little sign. With our polka-dot scarves.
For a while, with our conch. Our timer. Our prompts.
And then they closed the bar and exploded the building.

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