Confessions of an Off-Broadway Waitress

Kofi Fosu Forson

I once knew me a European black boy. His accent built a bubble in my ear. He came struttin’ beside a blond woman-chile. We were Off-Broadway. The men came in colors…colors. They talked foreign movies. Beside them were the cappuccino girls. I stood ever so straight, hands behind my back, waiting on these men and their Carson McCullers wannabe’s. Just like them, I loved the word “mellifluous.”

I filled up my diaries with stories about love. I couldn’t find it in the after-hours.

“Burn my back some,” I would say to a fella. He’d strike a match to a cigarette. Then he’d burn my back some.

Come morning, I’d fix him mud in a China cup. He’d come back with his marching boots on to peel me like an onion, stockings and all.

I’d been hunting down forgotten poets. Made them learn the haiku. Prayed the day he came struttin’ beside a woman-chile. He had funk in his hair, down to his waist. What he wanted was water. I gave him more…A bit of Flannery, a little Baldwin.

That evening gave me something to work with. Cool breeze and the dizzy lights drug me plenty. He never did mind the play I had brought him to see. Surely, I had other plans boilin’ inside of me. It wudn’t long before he was sitting on my sofa, drinking malt liquor.

“Burn my back some,” I said to him. He lit a match to a cigarette. Then he burnt my back some. In the morning he robbed me of the money I owned.

Standing ever so straight, apron around my waist, I remember the way he said…

“Don’t ever say a word. That’s all you heard. I’m the song you can never sing. A drug you can never take. Yet I filled you up…I filled you up…Pushed that lovin’ all the way down.”

He lit a light in me that had been pale for too long.
He lit a light in me that had been pale for too long.
He lit a light in me that had been pale for too long.

Copyright Horatio Monologues