She rested her thin hands beside her keyboard
and proofread the email to her landlord.
She was adamant about getting the most
from her lease and, though wealthy,
insisted on knowing the price of everything.
Milk is almost five dollars and gas is almost milk.
Littered around her bedroom were shoeboxes
of handmade jewelry, pearls, and war correspondence,
each as fragile as a land mine. Loose soil footsteps,
shrapnel, and a Sofield soldier torn in two.

Pacing on cold, honeycomb linoleum,
I watched the sun rise through mesh
curtains. Sunlight striped my chest
like Gothic architecture while a clock
measured the outside. Two strikes
for a car to pass, seven for a lonesome
jogger, twelve for leaves to reach
the road, twenty for a cloud to overtake the window pane, and three
months left for me to watch it.

If my GPS didn’t take me the long way,
I’d never see the luscious mountain tops
spilling trees down their faces in spring
or mallards coasting downstream.
I’d miss out on a patch of stars
filling in for absent clouds
or a leafy overpass catching
the sunlight just right.

Beneath
a Marlboro
hat was his faded straight
pin and rake tine hair in patches.

A carton of Light
100's glowed house fire red
in the cashier's hand.

He pulled a fifty and two tens
from his wallet then coughed
up blood into
his sleeve.

I unrolled my sleeping bag like a rope ladder
to get a better view of the searchlight stars
that filled the sky and the river at my feet.
String lights washed up on the rocks unplugged,
but the ones above never stopped shining.
Minnows danced to the clouds passing
like slow motion strobes. Flashing lights
from a private jet made a few stars seem
bigger than they actually were. I assume
the same goes for the ones in California.

Sliding wounds were patched
up with concession stand napkins.
Wads of Big League Chew formed
a mosaic beneath the bench
and smelled like apple cherry.
Spat-out sunflower seed trim
lined the cracking cinder block walls
and became the popular hiding spot
for hair ties and M&Ms.; Lead
paint peeled from the walls in strips
like the white chalk lines
of the diamond beyond the fence.