
Today's Special
by Tyler Grant
I shred napkins between my fingers. When they are in a polite pile, I scatter them slowly onto the
diner’s faux quartz countertop. Outside the lights change at the intersection where Seventh
Avenue crosses Broadway. Earlier it was warmer and there was rain, it seems, by the puddles of
still water where lights reflect in a noiseless cacophony. After a while, the ground connotes the
northern lights – but in the air, it is a kaleidoscope. The shallow collections of water begin to fog
over with ice or turn black and invisible. Everyone is tuckered indoors, but I leave the warm shell
of the diner and walk in the center lane north with no particular direction. Aren’t we all during
transit?
I flip up the collar on my jacket, the wind has changed directions. I am consciously tiptoeing, a
shuffle might Wake an evening otherwise slumbering in such luminescence. Beyond, a small
grocery store there are people
Braving the cold selling stragglers milk and bread. An old bearded man carries out-of-season
Peaches to the check out, we make eye contact and he winks, or a drop fell into my eye.
By the time I make it home, it’s almost morning. As I lock the door behind me
I turn to the window and see it’s started to flurry.
About the Author
Tyler Grant is a lawyer and writer in New York, and a graduate of Washington and Lee University and University of Virginia School of Law. His poetry appears in Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Door Is A Jar, and Cathexis Northwest Press.