A Lone Diner at the Snout to Tail Bistro

She sent back the last order, as well. This time, she shook her head like a dog in the rain, like a posh-frock woman having "a spell." The brimming broth, she said, had a bitterness that swelled and stung between her cheeks, and across her tongue. It steamed with the scent of turmeric and sweat, a lipstick kiss in the basement of the Red Grotto Used Bookstore, of a Dominican girl, half her age, in skin jeans and red sneakers, pulling her by the hand during Summer City Lit Festival last year. She claimed she craved the steaming heat of our menu's Andean soup, but bones like razors waited when she raised the brim of the bowl to her lips. Just like the wine she sent back, she said that the broth bit her lip with a vicious grin when she closed her eyes, opened wide, leaned in, and tried to love it with the whole of her mouth.