A Couple at an Italian Restaurant

Looking in from the outside, they're smoking and drinking wine

On the patio, and they look so conspicuously happy, that I know

They are not happy at all. The man has a cigar protruding from his lips

And the lady is wearing a tattered red gown and a frown on her cheek.

She buries her crow's feet under a nest of expensive makeup and gloss.

And they ask each other, how has your day been? And they each respond,

Good, while twirling their empty forks in the air, searching for ghost spaghetti.

Oh, why hasn't the food arrived yet? I'm feeling rather sweaty from work.

It's been years since the children moved out, so an empty house bears no

Promise of passion; and the lady wakes up to the same man every day,

And she no longer feels a warm prickle in the corner of her stomach.

The blissful lurch of excitement, that feeling you used to get when

You were a child and you saw your mother picking you up at the end

Of the week from summer camp, and you memorized her face, and you

Recognized it from across the soccer field, and she always looked the same

Age to you because when she smoked, she wasn't trashy; she was Audrey Hepburn.

And even when she yelled she was beautiful because she loved you.

The lady no longer feels a tingle, a spark, a touch, a sensation that

Should feel like home. The man is aloof and he squints at her hair.

Why haven't you dyed it Dolores? Your roots are as grey as your sad face.

And she looks down at her shabby, naked nails, and everywhere she 

Looks she sees a cynical desolation. And he is waiting for the spaghetti.