The Nepalese restaurant
is bright yellow and blue
and empty.
Like a child’s birthday party
and no one showed up.
The owner gnaws at my heart,
standing, watching the people
line up in front of his window,
waiting for a table
at the Mexican restaurant
next door.
I want to yell at them to show
him mercy and eat his food.
He prepares it with tenderness
and his chai is on the house.
Look, I want to say to them,
you have never seen
a kinder face.
But I don’t yell at them
and I find I don’t look
in his window anymore
when I walk by.
I have eaten there,
the food is excellent,
but his patient eyes
threaten to flood me
with a strange shame
and the heaviest,
most unwieldy kind
of sad.