Every now and then
Usually, alone
I’ll get fast food
I’m talkin cheeseburger, fries, coke
If I’m gonna do it,
You can bet your ass its not going to be
a fast food salad for me,
That shit’s nasty
Anyways, today is one of those days

As I walked through the swinging double doors of Wendy’s, I thought:
I am so not writing a poem about this
No
No
No!
And here I am.

See, its like this,
As much as somewhere deep down inside of me doesn’t want to be here,
But rather wants to be at some place eating sushi or a Greek salad,
The Mexican woman at the cash register just made me feel sooooo welcome
Like I am meant to be here,
Not at some healthier place down the road.
Although she didn’t say it, I could read it in her eyes:
Forget the “Go Healthy Cafe”..its 40 degrees out and you want a nice, warm meal, don’t you senorita? Not some raw crap..

I chose a seat in the corner
I sat and both devoured and thoroughly enjoyed my value meal
I watched people and listened to their conversations:
A teenager and her grandmother talking about bad grades (could’ve been me..)
The Wendy’s staff talking about their General Manager (they didn’t seem to like her very much)

A young, pretty girl was spraying and wiping down tables

I thought: She’s too pretty to be working here, she should be at some hip restaurant downtown
She felt me looking at her and began to slowly make her way to where I was sitting
I felt the strong urge to open up, I thought:
I should tell her what I was thinking. I should tell her what I was thinking.
She said, Do you need anything?
Her voice did not match the beauty she carried
She should embrace herself, and be more confident I thought
I might have as well been telling myself that

I tried to tell her with my eyes what I was thinking
But instead, I blurted out:
Oh, no, thankyousomuch!

That is where this poem was going to end, but then, at the last minute….

After she had nodded and left..
I stared at the poem I had just produced
I decided my work was done there at Wendy’s
Though I regretted not having told the waitress what I thought
I guess I worried that her ignorance would send her back to the kitchen to tell the
older lady employees “guess what she just said” and that they then might think “what the hells that supposed to mean?”
I wasn’t going for that
I don’t know what I was going for but what I learned was:
If your intuition tells you to do it the first time,
Do it the first time
Because next I found myself having to try at it again….

Just as I was standing up to put my hat and mittens on,
The waitress showed up in the dining room again, she approached a man eating and said
Can I get you anything else?
I thought, here’s my next chance
I started getting nervous a little like I had made too much of it
She approached me and politely took my fast food tray from my hand and asked me the same question:
Can I get you anything else?

I realized at this point the girl should be working downtown even moreso because of her excellent service and manners
Not because she was pretty, but instead of saying that I said:
Oh, I wanted to tell you…
I got real hush-like — I didn’t want the customers to hear just in case they worked at Wendy’s
I said to her, just as planned:
You’re too pretty to be working here. You should be downtown or something.
Her expression showed that she was flattered
Which, if I were to be going for anything I guess it would be that
But I did notice just a flash of pushy lesbian in her eyes
Like she thought that I, was a pushy lesbian

Finally, I left Wendy’s
….And no one was ever going to know I was there, until now