BARE, NAKED LUNCH by Soul of a Poet

Having a taste for a good chicken sandwich, at lunchtime I walked 3 blocks from my office over to one of my favorite regular spots. I never got the juicy sandwich that I desired. Just outside the building, the first thing noticeable was the restaurant logo had been stripped from the windows. The open, newly naked windows revealed that the inside had also been completely depleted of its contents. The counter that I stood at, at least twice a week, the menu that I checked out on every visit (although I had it committed to memory), the lemonade fountain that had quenched my thirst numerous times, as well as and the cash register that had relieved me a fair portion of my weekly salary, were all gone. There were no traces of them left. No nails left in the walls where the menus once hung and no bolts protruding from were fixtures once stood. It was if it had never been there. There was so much as even a condiment pack, napkin, or straw. The way that it looked at that point, if I had never been there before, I could question if ”ANYTING” had EVER occupied the bare, naked space.
Standing there staring at the new nothingness that had over the past couple of years become a regular part of my weekly routine, my mind wandered.
I wondered if he had emptied me from his heart and mind as quickly and completely as the restaurant had emptied its contents. Did he remove all thoughts and traces of the union that had once been us as cleanly as menus, ads, and pictures were now nothing left but naked drywall? Did his mind hold any of the memories that mine did, of our time spent together, kisses we’d once shared, and the passionate and often feverishly times that we’d made love? Did he miss me at all? Did he ever long for the he and I that were once an intimate ‘we’? Were there any traces of me left in him? When he speaks with his friends and family, does my name ever roll sweetly from his lips the way it once did when I was his ‘boo’ or is his conversation completely void of me as If the time with me never existed? Did I evaporate from his heart as coolly as one discards trash and other items that no longer have use or value?
As I stand in front of the bare windows feeling my stomach beginning to growl as I realize that I no longer have a desirable option for lunch. I am hungry. I am hungry to be open again. I don’t want to be shut down and empty as if I don’t and never have, had anything useful or desirable inside. I don’t wanna be a faint memory of only what is past and is no longer.
My stomach growls intensify and my hunger is undeniable. I am hungry to be open for business to one of whom I am part of their regular routine. I am hungry to be open to one who craves me and needs for nourishment and sustenance. I want to be reopened to one… who when with me, greedily devours all of me like an insatiable fiend. I want to be reopened and cherished like so many lunch customers that had stood in long lines (daily), awaiting the food they’d looked forward to and craved all morning.


I am hungry to be open for business once more.