I park beneath a buzzing streetlight,
engine ticking like a verdict in the heat.
Paper sack on my passenger seat,
smelling like comfort dressed in grease and sweet.
The wrappers crack like little sermons,
and I answer with a hungry kind of grin.
One more bite to hush the questions,
one more bite to keep the quiet thin.
I eat like I’m erasing minutes,
like chewing turns regret into a blur.
Ketchup stains my thumb like evidence,
and I pretend I never noticed, sir.
A lonely man can make a banquet
from a pile of cheap, soft bread.
A lonely man can call it mercy
while his chest stays hard as lead.
The world outside keeps selling virtue
in tidy cups with plastic lids.
I watch it through a fogged-up window
like a father watching kids.
My phone spits news and tragedy,
I tap past it like a bored referee.
Then I open another burger
like a gate that only opens up for me.
Pickles bite like small green gossip,
onions sting like truth I can’t respect.
I swallow every simple warning,
then chase it with a soda’s fake effect.
My stomach plays the grateful drumbeat,
my brain goes quiet for a while.
That silence costs a lot tomorrow,
yet tonight it buys me one clean mile.
I wipe my mouth on paper napkins
printed with a smiling little face.
It feels like being judged by cartoons
in a fluorescent holy place.
I hear the folklore of the parking lot,
the midnight tales men never tell.
How hunger wears a human costume,
how comfort runs a quiet shell.
I’m not starving for the flavor,
I’m starving for the pause in my own head—
for the moment I stop measuring
every word I never said.
I bite again and feel the heartbeat
of a system that prefers me dull.
A man with crumbs on his shirtfront
makes a perfect, quiet tool.
No speeches, no brave confessions,
just wrappers stacked like fallen flags.
Just a steering wheel held steady
while my pride slips out in rags.
Somewhere inside this ritual,
a smaller me still wants to quit.
He taps the glass from the inside,
then watches me take another hit.
When the last burger disappears,
I sit with the aftertaste of facts.
The hush lifts off my shoulders,
and the old ache crawls right back.
I start the car, I roll the window,
cold air cuts through fried perfume.
I toss the sack, I clear the evidence,
still hauling what I can’t exhume.
Tomorrow I’ll sound reasonable,
tomorrow I’ll act clean and bright.
Tonight I fed the empty animal
and called the feeding “all right.”