THE STEGER Prize For Poetry
White Lights
by Joselyn Takacs
when the night feels darkest on the road, seems to leech into my
skin like loneliness is hugging me, these white lights would burn
a sinner’s soul clean.
it’s the fluorescent sting of bargain-bought hazard flares
attacking my pupils. i’d never forget that glare and the look of
confused panic as the lights embrace the stragglers emerging
from the darkness. tommi would signal to me with her smirk as
the squatters would break into a momentary spasm of squinting
and shielding themselves from the brightness. if you knew the
characters there, the night’s forgotten soldiers, is what tommi
would call them. if you knew them, then you’d understand
charlie’s. it is a sanctuary.
we’d sit there for hours sipping our endless cups of burnt
folgers. coffee was never its strong point, charlie’s, but i’d put
my life on the key lime pie or their home fries or anything else
for that matter. the waitresses too, the nicest ladies you’d ever
meet, but the kind with sweetly sunken hearts like the faint
fireflies we kept in jars by our pillows. they have smiles that are
really sighs.
and those men, those flannel-clad truckers with calloused looks.
a gathering of weary-eyed truckers was always to be found there.
we’d wonder how they found each other, how they knew to find
charlie’s. tommi would say their stares felt like a forced rub-
down with rough hands. we would tell each other the stories of
their lives. the tragedies, the amusing call-girl run-ins, and the
incestuous family relations. but tommi would sometimes add
a spielberg-style ending. she’d paint them into tragic heroes. i
loved it when she did that.
the picture on the walls look like they died of old age. they are
sparsely placed like the abandoned cheerios left circling your
bowl, irrationally clinging to each other, and boasting friendly
slogans like “home is where the heart is.” wood carvings and
norman rockwell prints drown in the paisley stripes of peeling
wallpaper. tommi said if you just wiped the dust away maybe
they’d start breathing again. tommi used to say things like that.
we don’t see each other very much anymore, me and tommi.
she’s working now because we aren’t kids anymore, because
we can’t spend every night with the comfort of those soldiers
anymore, just because.
but from the highway you can still see our charlie’s, the humble
roadside diner, and its cleansing lights beckon to the stragglers
with the promise of a future, and collects them like moths
dancing to a porch light.
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