Milo's by Dale Wisely

A woman is in the parking lot
of a Milo's Hamburger joint
wearing a red uniform tee,
two minutes before her shift.

She hugs another woman
who has dropped her off.
They break the long hug
and both wipe away tears.
The employee turns and gets halfway

to the door, but turns back,
rushes up to the other woman,
and they hug again, this time
both shaking with sobs.

This moment,
even separated from all others,
is the reason for the air,
for water, for gravity,
for the tilting and turning of the earth.



Dale Wisely runs Ambidextrous Bloodhound Press, which publishes Right Hand Pointing, One Sentence Poems, Unbroken Journal, first frost, Unlost Journal, and The Scarred Tree: Poems on Moral Injury. With Katherine DiBella Seluja he co-edited Memento: An Anthology Memento: An Anthology of Poems on Grief (2025). His upcoming book of poems, A Book of Saturdays, is due out from Seed Bed Press in September 2026.