Page 65 - WTPVolI Vol.#4

I Wonder
how to respond when the checkout woman
tells me her son has been sick since he ate
the crackers I’m buying, holds the box up
and scowls, claiming his grades have slipped too and he’s started to listen to ugly music,
you know? And I want to tell her I do,
then venture a similarly intimate tidbit:
I wake up some nights to walk through our house speaking to the mirrors as though they might make me younger—but that would be mostly untrue,
and besides, the express line is long, so I just
take my receipt and head out as I hear her
telling the shopper behind me her cat
was poisoned by the food he is buying.
—And then I’m outside, standing in a summer downpour, mounting my bike and riding,
dismayed and joyous at the sudden exuberance
of a storm that will flood all the streets and darken
the afternoon; commuters heading home
will squint and lean close to their windshields, cursing the rain, which will taste delicious as it runs
down my face from my water-blinded eyes.
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