Where Lives Collide
This town of very few streets
has many stoplights, the places
where more than roads
cross each other. Bob Briggs,
the first man to put an oil drill
where his cattle grazed,
raised voices with John Brown
for 30 years every morning
as they ate Fanny’s famous pancakes
at the small restaurant Fanny’s family
ran for generations. Her booths
steamed with more than the steaks
and fried potatoes she served,
as customers argued politics,
when to plant, and the need
for the first stoplight just north
of the high school baseball field.
No one forgets the scalding cup
of coffee Milly Brewer threw
at her cheating husband one
Saturday morning while her kids
were home eating up cartoons and cereal,
or what about the proposal,
when the rotund sheriff labored
down to one knee before the skinny,
blonde beauty queen who said yes
and gave him three, pudgy children?
No one driving through ever stops
at Fanny’s, where no highway goes.
Only the faded stop sign a block
from where she flips burgers
over a red-hot grill points
to the need for intersecting lives,
the places people meet
to share love and discord,
as well as the scent of burnt coffee
and pies mile-high meringued.
Ramona Levacy
April 26, 2015
goodchristianfiction 