The Gas Station Paradox

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.