I’m sitting across from my wife
in Rivière-du-Loup picking at fries
while she sips iced tea after driving
all day along the coastal road,
both of us eager to rest in our room,
watch the Blue Jays in the World Series,
then drop a melatonin to help us sleep
before another long day tomorrow,
but the TV isn’t working. The kid
at the front desk said he’d send a techie
but his English and my French
are as broken as the TV. We decide
to get a bite and backtrack in the car
to this diner we saw on the way
to the motel that reminds us of another
diner just like this, giant cone on the roof
with a swirl of softserve luring us in,
reminding us of that other place
we took the kids thirty years ago.
I watch her sip, lips barely touching
the straw and for some reason I wonder
what life’ll be like when one of us
isn’t this good, one of us sipping
everything through a straw, a vision
so heavy I don’t want to think about it
so I ask if I can kiss her because
she has always been the most
beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,
but if I tell her that I get that look
of hers that suggests I’m full of shit,
but on this topic, anyway, I’m not,
so I ask about the kiss, just ask – 
and she nods, and then she asks me
what I would do differently
if I had my life to live over again. 
At first I’m thinking, What kind
of question is that for a man of my age?
but then I consider all of the moments
that have gotten me this far, to this plastic
seat in a diner, here in Rivière-du-Loup,
with this woman who I just said –
you know what I said – and I tell her
exactly what you think I would.

---

Bill Garvey grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, and currently lives in Canada. Bill’s collection of poetry, The basement on Biella, was published in 2023 by DarkWinter Press. His work has been nominated for The Griffin Poetry Prize and Best of the Net. His poems have appeared in The Queen’s Quarterly, New Verse News, Thimble, Wrong Turn Lit, Rattle, One Art, San Antonio Review, Connecticut River Review, Cimarron Review, The New Quarterly, Nixes Mate Review and others.