Ellen Kombiyil Denny's: a Confession The dirt-brown carpet blooms in patches of round tables, booths. A tired waitress in support hose grips a coffee pot. The patrons are either sleepy or loud and drunk. Years ago, the boy who would so casually break my heart serenaded me in an identical room. The menu never changes. Above my head a cardboard picture of a strawberry milkshake perpetually swings in the breeze of an air vent, and I have the sudden urge to steal something, to remember, so I stuff the menu card into my tote bag. Later it will remind me how road and night converged, made separate only by headlights and the white flashing line white flashing line, like morse code from some other realm, and how the suburbs transfixed me, their open porches dotted with miniature suns. I will have traveled all night in an approximate direction only to one day hold a laminated card that reads Moons Over My Hammy, what promise in a name and its impossible, syrupy picture.

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