The final page of the menu

Fiction · Original fiction

The café's menu had one page at the back with no prices. It listed dishes the cook had stopped making, and the month each disappeared.

A visitor asked why. The cook said people still remembered them, and remembering did not require keeping every dish in the kitchen.

The visitor found a soup she had eaten on her first day in the city. She ordered something else and wrote its name on the back of her receipt.

Before leaving, she thanked the cook for the page. He nodded as though she had complimented the meal. Next month he added another dish, leaving plenty of blank space beneath it for choices the café had not yet made.