Cold claws your clothes. Cold bites your skin. Cold gnaws your bones and numbs your heart. Through cold, silent streets, you trudge in hand-me-down donkey jacket and thrift-store boots. Snow heaps in mounds like dusted white slag.

You arrive at Hank’s Diner for your early shift. It’s your job to open up. Scrub toilets. Mop the floor. Peel the huge sack of Russet potatoes ready for Hank’s famous breakfast home fries. Hands red raw, you fumble with the icy key but the door lock is frozen solid. Bollocks! You need this job. Need to prove yourself. Prove it’s been worth it, despite the long, cold journey across the cold, roiling sea, the shabby rented room, the long, cold nights so far away from home, the long, hungry days working crappy jobs. Soon you’ll turn seventeen. You’ll get a Green Card. Buy your own diner with pink, neon sign. You’ll call it The Flamingo.

You look up and down the blank white street. In the distance a dog whines. The metallic sound of a shovel scraping snow. Cold as flint, the sky shivers. Ten past seven. By now, three thousand miles away, it will be almost tea time. Covered in coal dust and grime, Dadi, your brothers, Owain and Rhys, and uncle Wyn will have clocked off. Half-bladdered already in the Colliers Arms. You shudder.

As you turn away from the diner, you see a couple, huddled in front of an abandoned car, their voices low and muffled. You could ask for their help with the frozen lock, but something stops you. Instead, they set off on foot and without knowing why, you follow them.

The couple head through East Ward towards the port. You keep your distance. Remain unseen, as usual. You can hear their soft laughter. You see the affectionate way the woman rests her head on the man’s thick coated shoulder; how they talk so easily. As the couple reach Ferry Street, the man stops. He bends over, plucks a small flower, delicate and white, from the glistening bank, and presents it to the woman. They kiss. Then carry on walking.

You no longer feel the cold. You sink down onto an icy drift and sleep. Beyond the slate grey harbor, comes the low, aching rumble of a cargo ship.

*Highway Diner (oil on canvas, no date) by Henry Gasser (1909–1981) was gifted in 1979 to SAAM (Smithsonian American Art Museum) by Paul W. Doll, Jr.; link confirmed in September 2026:
https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/highway-diner-8831

Bio: Jane Salmons