I keep having that nightmare

where I sprint to greet a table, but the restaurant unfolds like an origami swan. I don’t know how
I make my way there. A one-top with a man. I regurgitate a menu readable from my hair. The
salmon is farm-raised Atlantic salmon, raised off the coast of Chile, surrounded in a Thai
coconut curry reduction, which is a fancy word for a thick sauce on a bed of purple jasmine rice.
No, we can’t change the color. No, we cannot substitute the rice for mashed potatoes. No, the
sauce isn’t that spicy. This fucker asks for sparkling water. I cut my hand opening his Pellegrino.
I feel my years bleed out as they mix with the carbonated clear to make a clotted Shirley Temple.
Delicious, he compliments, crisp pear and sour strawberries...is that a missed funeral I taste?
The earthy tones of years of service. Your lost time
provides pungent notes one might find in a pinot noir. A stinging shade, but sadistically I smirk. I
love this job. Even my nightmares know I will always live in restaurants. For the food I gush
over and for the moments I begrudge, but will never send back to the chef. So when his meal
arrives, I serve him my bloody finger for the sauce. He tears my hair, sprinkles it into the
reduction, and demands that I shout at his salmon. I offer the man my tears, my streams of salt.
Instead, he licks my face and shoves it into the rice.