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The smoky smell on my jacket is lingering like a just extinguished candle. I don't even smoke. I sip my coffee, which has a brown pensive taste, and take everything in. It became Sunday only three short hours ago. The people here are tightly clutching the night--holding it close like rosary beads or a talisman.

Servers carrying trays move around the white linen-covered tables at different speeds while holding their arms high, making them seem like a troop of Bohemian dancers to me. And a gray man in dirty blue jeans perches on an oaken bar stool and repeats the phrase "gaggle of geese" while rocking his hard-living body to its hum.

Some of the couples around me speak quietly in knowing, oval-shaped tones. Later they will converse the same way under thick quilts while scrunching their bodies close to escape the air, every now and then, laughing when their cold feet touch. Even now their eyes seem half-open and half closed on this morning that is half night.

Some people standing in line for the bathroom talk to each other about...lines and bathrooms. Each is relieved and happy when the door opens and it is their turn to have solitude. Outside it has just stopped raining. The streets seem eerie. The fog is causing curious if not supernatural halos around lights from streetlamps and cars.

I take one more sip of coffee. Why do we all alternately love and hate ourselves? I swallow the hot liquid, something escapes my throat sounding like "gaggle"

To Whom it may concern:

Please contact me if you know the whereabouts of the girl, with the particularly good posture, eating shrimp and grits here this morning around 3:30 AM.

I think I love her.

She seemed to be in the exact center of the restaurant and I was listening. She was waving her arms and slicing the air like a conductor bringing Rhapsody and Blue home, all this while tightly clutching her coffee cup.

Not a decaf-kind-of-girl, I'm guessing.

And before those at her table raised their oyster shots she spoke of Anton Chekhov. After he died, his body was transferred from Berlin to Moscow in a refrigerated car that had the words "Fresh Oysters" painted on the sides. And she was laughing a most wonderfully true sound.

She toasted Chekhov, and while she was at it--Tolstoy, then slurped the oyster down. And I can't recall glimpsing such joy over such a silly fact (But some remember life is a beautiful comedy, and how can we begrudge them that?)

Meanwhile, the companion at my table was explaining something of great importance to him; about a car; or his parole officer or some interesting looking rash just before I cut him off with a large "Shush."

And he punched me on the nose.

Then I, eyes watering, went to the restroom. And when I returned he was gone and more importantly SHE was gone.

So here I sit, finishing the rest of his cheese omelet, and writing this rather strange request. Please contact me. I'll be the one with a crooked, red nose and the quickly-beating heart just waiting over here.

Jamie Doom also has a few more poems in the restaurant

For Tupelo Honey

Baroque waterdrops paint the halos of cooks a luscious violet
They sing like sacred choirs and fill bellies with hot silken food
Incadescent moths kiss waitresses as they dance around the room in their satelite patterns
stirring invocations with their hips carrying plates like moons
The patrons quiet down and pray
And eat- they eat and pray
And make toasts to nourishment
They abandon all worries between bites of biscuits
A kitchen bustles and hums a slender beacon for starving flesh
Silver and gold spirits bless the room causing red flowers to emerge from the wall
Ancestors breathe in the recipes of their youth and give birth to sugarcane
-Honey Bee Jenkins