Nobody asks why you're here. They just pass you a spoon.
Midnight is a strange hour to feed people, and exactly the right one. It's when the shift workers get off, when the buses thin out, when the city goes quiet enough that a lit doorway and the smell of broth carry down the whole block.
Inside, it's the opposite of quiet. Pots the size of drums. Candles down the middle of one long table — no head, no foot, no assigned seats. Strangers shoulder to shoulder, sleeves rolled, the murmur of two hundred conversations stitched into one.
"Soup is patient. It waits at the back of the stove for whoever walks in — and so do we." — heard over the pots, some Thursday past midnight
Two hundred bowls sounds like a number. It isn't. It's the night-shift nurse and the student who missed dinner. It's the man who comes for the warmth and stays for the talk. It's whoever you are, whenever you find us.
The bowls empty. The table stays long. And every Thursday, the steam rises again.