A week after the Apollo 11 landing,
I sip a fresh pour of coffee
before my scrambled eggs and toast
among a line of Saturday customers
at the shared countertop.
Barbara, a regular
who holds a strawberry jam bottle
with stories
in her hands, asks,
“Do you need the jam?
I don’t want to hog it.”
A chuckle bounces out.
When I mutter,
“Oh no thank you,”
she answers with a grin,
“My Pa had a sweet tooth.
He slathered jam on his toast.”
Spinning her barstool
to fully face my Irish features,
she studies me
like a lunar rock.
“You look like a friend I knew
in Dachau. Paul.
His name was Paul.”
Back at Hamburger Haven
one Saturday later, Barbara yells
across the countertop:
“Paul! Remember me?
How did you survive Dachau?
My Ma and Pa didn’t.”
Once I wave over my chilled water,
I scoop out an ice cube
to crush its lunar crater coldness
between my back molars.
An egg sizzles on the fryer.
With a wink on the side,
the dish slides
before Barbara’s tattooed smile.