Email Poem

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Poem


A woman at the gas station
is unremarkable besides
her name tag reading Clarity 
and her teeth, saying never mind. 

She asks if I need a receipt. 
I say no, like I'm not collecting
evidence in the glovebox of a car
that only drives in reverse. 

The smell of ethanol summons
June bugs: last summer, I siphoned
moons from my mother's backup generator, 
poured it over my cereal to see if dreams 
dissolve as fast as sugar. Her energy—
like Marlboro Lights in a freezer
next to a jar of cursed pig's feet, 
was not good.

I made do, and avoided the dues
of an HOA family with trimmed contracts
and shaggy lawns. I'd suck on ice cubes
until my jaw locked into something 
more useful than language. 

The shape of now is the welt 
from a seatbelt I forgot to wear
in a car I no longer own. 
It's the raisin I found stitched
into the lining of my bra—
a pocket universe, sweet and rotting. 

It's saying, I'm fine
in Morse code
with a spoon that isn't there,
and a sink. It's yesterday's grapes
fermenting in my purse,
waiting for communion I keep
missing. 

Even now, I kiss the air between 
this breath and the next,
like it wasn't blood magic all along, 
like I might whisper the password 
to get us out of purgatory. 

Still, I leave the gas station 
without a receipt, but I did get
a lottery ticket guaranteed to win—
if only I forget why I bought it.

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