Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

She likes the ritual; breakfast out every Sunday.

     I’ve been meeting her at Dudley’s Family Restaurant every Sunday for the past seven months. She always arrives before me. Tells me to meet her at nine sharp, but I normally straggle in around quarter-past. On the rare occasion when I have arrived at nine, or even five to, she’s always here before me. She is and always will be - punctual, proper and predictable.

     Like the sex we used to have, another Sunday morning ritual.

     I brought coffee back to bed for the two of us. I sat and savoured mine. She propped herself up on three pillows, gulped her first cup and then read patiently for ten minutes, waiting for me to put down my cup. When I did, finally, she eased a hand over beneath the sheet to check if I was hard. A minute later we were gnashing teeth and prying pyjamas from flesh, the caffeine kicking in. Once down to essentials, she played it cool, lay back, kicked out the blankets at her feet, and guided my head towards her centre, where I licked, her taste chasing the coffee from the floor of my mouth.

     Half an hour later we’d be done. I became garrulous, yammering in the kitchen over a second cup of coffee. She became reticent, back to her book, on the toilet now, legs crossed, casually going about her business.

     An hour later, showers administered, we’d go out for breakfast. But not to Dudley’s. Another place. More upscale and self-important. Bailey’s Bistro? I can’t remember the name. Somebody’s bistro. They’ve closed since.

Now it is only breakfast. She hasn’t been able to drop this part of the ritual.

     I sit, smile wanly, and a hovering waitress appears.

     “Coffee?” she asks, although I have yet to refuse her these past seven months.

     “Uh-huh,” I reply, turning the cup over for her.

     She fills it and drops cream and sugar.

     I take it black.

     Rosemary stares out onto the street.

     We sit in silence for thirty, forty seconds, before the waitress returns.

     “Ready to order?”

     Unlike the bistro, they don’t let you loiter at Dudley’s. Breakfast is taken very seriously and served with efficiency.

     “I’ll have the usual,” Rosemary says.

     The waitress pencils it down on her pad.

     “I’m fine with coffee for now,” I say.

     The waitress looks puzzled. She pauses.

     “You should order something,” Rosemary says. It’s the first thing she has said since I sat down.

     “You’re losing weight. Eat something,” she urges, like an insistent grandmother.

     “Alright, okay,” I relent, eager to be on solid ground with her, even if its only over what I have for breakfast.

     “I’ll have the special,” I say, unimaginatively. “Eggs, scrambled. Brown toast and, uh, bacon.”

     I turn to Rosemary. She looks satisfied.

     The waitress scurries away, scribbling as she walks.

Despite the weather, we always walked breakfast off in the woods in Churchill Park, a block or two from the bistro. This meant traipsing through mud and clumps of rotting brown leaves in the rain in autumn, or sliding over slick trails in the winter. In fairer weather, we would settle into an unhurried gait, greet dog-walkers, dodge runners and mountain bikers, and admire the blooms around us. When we came to a clearing, we would stop, turn together and face the sun like a pair of heliotropic flowers, then drop to the earth and spread ourselves in the grass for ten minutes of ruminative sky-watching.

Today, mid-October, the midst of a First Nations summer spell, would be ideal for a casual stroll through the park. But a walk together in the woods, like the sex that preceded breakfast, has been trimmed from the ritual as well.

     We get caught up in the four or five minutes before breakfast arrives. There is very little that can possibly be new and exciting since we chatted seven days ago, but I run through the gauntlet of questions anyway.

     “You keeping well?” I ask.

     “Uh-huh,” she replies, lifting her coffee cup and searching the bottom to confirm that it’s empty.

     “Job alright?”

     Rosemary looks at me directly for the first time. She always does for this question. “Same shit. I’ll get through it,” she murmurs desperately.

     “You looking for anything else?”

     “Just thinking about looking, not actually looking,” Rosemary replies. She puts her cup down and checks the street again.

     “Heard from your mother?” I ask. Now it’s my turn to reach for my coffee cup for something to occupy my hands.

     “You know I have,” she says sternly. “Dinner at her place every other Wednesday. Never fails. Won’t take no for an answer. You remember how it was.” Her voice trails off.

     I slurp my coffee, which I know annoys her.

     “Mom’s getting old,” Rosemary says earnestly. “It worries me sometimes. She doesn’t cook like she used to. Much less variety.”

     I shrug, scalding my tongue with black coffee.

The breakfast arrives a minute later, a minute passed without further conversation. Platters of brown, yellow and reddish-black food are placed strategically by the waitress in front of us.

     “Enjoy yer breakfast,” she quips and darts away.

     Food fills the aforementioned silence. We eat together solemnly, eyes coming up from plates occasionally, checking on each other, then skirting off to avoid contact, scanning the interior of Dudley’s, or feigning interest in the pedestrians on King Street. A humble meal, the hub of our brief time together.

Fifteen minutes after they were dropped, the plates are taken up by the waitress. I wipe my mouth with a paper napkin and look at Rosemary. She is dressed in a billowy black sweater that shadows her lithe frame beneath. Her hair has grown long and is approaching the unmanageable phase. She wears neither make-up, nor jewellery, and looks stoic in her mournful nudity. She turns and reaches for her wallet, distracting me from my inventory of her features.

     “Thanks for breakfast,” she says, although she always pays her half. She thanks me, more, for the company, strained as it may be.

     Seven months, about thirty Sunday morning breakfasts together, and this is all she ever has to say. I’ve tried three or four times, to bring up our past, to hint at some resolution, or at least lay my bargaining position on the table between us, but every time she deflects my words with an upheld palm, her face turned away, her mouth full of pancake. I’ve always let it slide, knowing how she hates serious conversation over a meal.

Rosemary stands, pushes her chair back, steps to the side, and slides the empty seat back against the table.

     “See you next week,” she says, as I stare at the empty chair opposite me.

     She won’t leave until I grunt confirmation. When I do, I know exactly what she’ll do next. She’ll whisper a strained “Good... See you then... Good-bye...” and then put a hand on my shoulder as she passes. A dozen times, and again today, I’ve wanted to grab that hand and pull her face towards me until I can smell the coffee and syrup on her breath and kiss her sticky lips violently, tasting her sweet saliva on my scalded tongue. But I never do. I always let her go, let her walk casually out into the street.

Today - a warm Sunday in October - is no different. She pats my shoulder and glides out of the restaurant like a ghost. I look for her on King Street. I follow her image down the sidewalk until she is beyond my vantage, and then turn back to the empty table.

     Another thirty seconds of silence, and the waitress arrives scooping up Rosemary’s cash.

     “More coffee?” she asks.

     “Yes,” I answer through a clenched jaw.

     It’s how I finish every meal. But still she insists on asking.