Never Ever by Brenda Shaughnessy

Never Ever

Alarmed, today is a new dawn,

and that affair recurs daily like clockwork,

undone at dusk, when a new restaurant

emerges in the malnourished night.

We said it would be this way, once this became

the way it was. So in a way we were

waiting for it. I still haven’t eaten, says the cook

in the kitchen. A compliant complaint.

I never eat, says the slender diner. It’s slander,

and she’s scared, like a bully pushing

lettuce around. The cook can’t look, blind with hunger

and anger. I told a waiter to wait

for me and I haven’t seen him since. O it has been forty

minutes it has been forty years.

Late is a synonym for dead which is a euphemism

for ever. Ever is a double-edged word,

at once itself and its own opposite: always

and always some other time.

In the category of cleave, then. To cut and to cling to,

somewhat mournfully.