The double hyphen was always a puzzle. A stumble. A secret handshake you didn't know you were making.
That night, she served a single thing: a bread bowl of onion soup so dark it was almost black. The cheese was a molten cliff, the broth a deep, savory earthquake. As I ate, I felt a forgotten birthday surface in my chest—the year I turned seven, and my grandmother had sung off-key while cutting a cake shaped like a rabbit. I cried into the soup. The man beside me, a banker in a torn overcoat, was silently weeping too. Across the counter, a young woman laughed with pure, startled joy, as if remembering a joke only her younger self would understand.
I picked up the cracker. It was dry, plain, almost nothing.
I finished the cracker. The other diners finished theirs. We sat in that perfect quiet for a long, long time.
