Down the narrow store aisle
shelves bulging with merchandise
resembling a hoarders hallway
but here, things are brightly lit
my fingers move lightly across the tops
of changing objects
like piano keys.
Pausing a moment,
felt like holding a note
I stalled in the lane and was
nudged from behind,
my bag shrugged off my shoulder
snapping me
out of kaleidoscope vision-
I craned my neck
backward to acknowledge
someone-apologize-but-no one was
in the aisle with me.
I continued along, slightly unsettled,
when I was then most certainly pushed
by another consumer of wares
in another aisle
on the other side
of the store
of my body.
I did not bother to look,
nobody was there.
It was easy enough to ignore.
He had been waiting in the car.
He found me,
he wore an misfit smile.
He touched me for the first time in
five years,
intentionally
down my spine
reaching all the way
into the realm of dreams
softly.
Quickly and deeply
under flourescent lights,
he told me how he fell
in love
before
and wanted to tell me
what he saw, then, recently,
but I wouldn't understand
nor could I heft its weight.
Cradling a rectangle mirror in his palm
the images he saw
expanded and contracted
at will-with a pinch and pull,
until it all grew too large
and thin and had to shatter
into shards across his feet.
His grip had been too tight.
Through a screen,
it was a dream
I see, I said
like privacy glass.
Nothing was hidden here
or there,
it was simply harder to find.
If only the advertisements
were to scale,
the distance could be measured
between desire and death
marked down
with a red tag.
Marriage is easier to get into than out of.
It is easier to get stuff than give it away.
There is nothing new
nothing I want to buy,
I said at his head facing
his phone-without looking up,
he offered,
You can order anything you like online.
I stood in line with a metal box of pranks
in hand,
You found something, he finally observed
the waiting.
Who is that for?
Me. I'm the only one I know who falls for
these things-
even when I know how they work.
I'll buy it, he said.
Image credited by New York Public Library, no date, no source info given. In Public Domain.
