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I wanted the patty melt to taste like twenty-two,

back when the grease felt like a reward.

But the meat is a gray slab of industrial salt

and the onions are translucent and limp.

The booth is the same red, cracked vinyl,

but now it just grabs at the back of my legs

with a sticky, desperate grip.

I’m eating alone in a room that smells

like a lemon-scented crime scene.

I should have just stayed home

with my frozen burrito and the silence.