diners

 i sat alone in a seedy diner where i eat my breakfast a few times a week. its not glamorous but it feels real to me, a place where work crews stop to get a hot meal and one waitress in her sixties runs her butt off taking care of twenty tables. a place where she remembers how you like your coffee and brings it the minute you walk in. a place where people know your name and ask how you are if you've been sick. the kind of place where elderly people shuffle in and eat the same meals every day and i felt at home. it's the same reason i like to travel for weeks at a time on scruffy greyhound buses and just talk to people, to discover who they are and how they live. i could listen to their stories and people watch forever at times like this. not sure why these stories or these people touch my heart so, but they do and i am grateful for it.