Church of The Holy Waffle

For the Battered and Weary

To this day, I hope the sausage was cooked.

Coffee and Conversations

I came back to God at a church in southern Missouri in my early twenties. If there’s anything you need to know about southern churches it’s this: Evening service is over at 7pm, church ends at 11pm. These full Sundays always led to an empty stomach over an empty journal at the local Waffle House.

If you’ve never been to a “Waffle House” let me provide a little “theater of the mind,” if you will. You’re sitting in a gas station bathroom that smells of Marlboro Reds and someone slides you a plate of hashbrowns under your stall door. You can’t complain. You asked for this, and you’re not really sure if the sausage is fully cooked, but who’s asking, because the service is good.

Photo by Simon Daoudi on Unsplash

“Welcome back, honey,” she said sliding me a coffee. “It’s on the house.”

”The usual?”
”The usual.”
”Grits too?”
”Yes ma’am”
”And you want the hashbrowns smothered, covered‘n peppered, right?”
”That’s right”
”Comin’ right up.”

*Thock!* The first cup meets the table, slightly splashing black gold over the rim. I drop my pen to my page, trying to recall what I learned as a rededicated church-goer, and perhaps write a little poetry before my food arrives. I write the date at the top of the page and… nothing. Again. I am far too distracted by everything going on. People are far too interesting with their prattling about their day or how their food is too cold. Yet still, I try to write, because writing poetry over diner coffee is visually pretentious and I’m an insecure intellectual.

Third cup. Midnight rolls around as living stories stumble through the doorways— tired eyes, home fries, lonely travelers, and conversations that might make my mama blush. This is why I’m here. When bar hops stop, honest conversations drop into the waffle spot. My ears activate and I wait over a now, cleaned plate in the corner booth. This became the ritual.

As weeks turned into months, a handful of other regulars, once estranged, now engage in conversations as if we’d known eachother for decades and I couldn’t tell if I had left church or just arrived. A musician, a chronically ill missionary, a graffiti artist, a single mom and girl trying to get away from it all were among the souls that life dragged in week after week. This unassuming diner had soon turned into a weekly hub for the hurting and the unheard and I didn’t know if I looked forward to praying at a waffle house or an altar.

We all had one thing in common outside of insatiable appetites… we just wanted someone to listen. We wanted someone to hear about the breakup, the new album, parenthood, loss, addiction and the hope of Christ. We wanted to hide our secrets and successes in souls that we felt were safe.

As time moved on, so did I, and I haven’t stood on the greasy floors of a Waffle House since. I often wonder if the same regulars still show up to commiserate, and if they do, do they remember the guy in the corner booth?

I guess what I mean to say in all of this is that kindness is free, and if given the chance to hand it out to a stranger, empty your reserve.

Spoiler alert: I never really got a lot of writing done, but I did learn that listening is often one of the highest forms of love, especially when there’s coffee involved.

Anyhow, this has nothing to do with writing, but I hope it helps.

📷Instagram / ✉️edwardlholmes@yahoo.com /📺 YouTube / 🎙️Poetry Podcast