One morning, when our tea kettle
could no longer whistle,
we took our car out to Lanesboro,
eyes still sticky with sleep,
to an old diner, unfamiliar then,
where a man sitting at the counter,
face sun-spotted and forgotten,
slumped over a cold cup of coffee,
his body, seemingly immovable,
turned towards us with movement
small and graceless, evidence of war,
as if to say, how nice – to feel nothing,
and still get full credit for being alive, ¹
only reacting to the bell that hung above the door.

^{1. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)<href=”#ref1″>↩}