Kansas after midnight is not so much silent as gently rearranged, as if the state simply shifts its weight and settles into a different rhythm.
Coffee tastes stronger at two in the morning, not because it is brewed differently, but because you need it more, and the grills hiss softly like crickets keeping time in fluorescent light.
Regulars slide into vinyl booths with the practiced ease of night-shift workers, truckers, and travelers who measure distance in hours rather than miles, all of them content to let the world slow down instead of chasing sleep…