Fried chicken, texas toast,
hold the slaw,
and add an extra texas toast.
A large sweet tea for her
and a lemonade for me.
Some extra sauce packets in the bag,
Please!

A meal fit
for a prince,
or a king,
or a god,
or just me and you,
two broke 20-somethings
with no pretenses between us.

The dining table is set across the dashboard
in a mess
of haphazardly stacked
sauce containers
and 32oz cups
packed into
already over-flowing cup holders.

The air is humming
with soft background beats
as we trash talk
and watch the street roll sleepily by,
streetlights and neon flashing
and reflecting
off the dash.

You kick your feet up
on the steering wheel mid-joke,
and my distracted hands
spill sauce down my shirt,
freezing us
in a moment
of silence.

We break the silence
with a flurry of laughter,
tears mixing with the sauce
until it seems
like the whole world
is nothing but
an absurd joke

and all
I want to do is
laugh at the world
in my sauce-stained shirt
with you
next to me,
laughing too.

Photo by Andre Ouellet on Unsplash