Walking through the store,
Surrounded by racks of other lived world's,
Given to be shared with someone else,
My hands brushing across jackets and shoes,
Feeling where someone tripped,
Or where a moth found it's way.

My thoughts meander to my own world,
The scuffs decorating my shoes,
The fraying strings of this jacket,
The torn pocket of these jeans,
All part of me here, and wondering,
Just how much you'd see of me in them.

I'm passing the time all the while,
My search idling between,
The articles of lives, and the ones moving around me,
Waiting for the certain one that led me here,
Leaving me to fend alone for just a moment,
A slight grin my only clue to run on.

Wandering back down, my mind was a flutter,
Before me, radiant and glowing,
The magnificence of your presence
Breathing a whole new meaning,
To a prismatic dress,
And a perfect black jacket,
Captured so brilliantly,
In my enamored mind.

We all go grocery shopping on Saturday at 4pm, and that’s America for you, but do you have to buy the last demi-loaf of artisan rice flour sourdough and swoop in to get the only carton of organic, local, grass-fed, 2% milk that I like, then have the tenacity to take the final gold foil-wrapped bar of imported Belgian dark chocolate and, for that matter, give me a Christ-save-your-soul stare when I spend a good five minutes debating the respective virtues of KY and Astroglide?

Thank god, at least, America sells liquor with its bread and milk and ****.

The tick of toothed gear
Gives handfuls of a surprise
Mike & Ike tasters.

my ears have been blown,
like shrapnel
by the elders always
reiterating
their complex tics of
indistinguishable versification

“energy is wasted
on the youth.”

well...

the youth need that energy
to patiently wait on the elders
as they buy an over abundance
of lotto tickets and hold up the line
at the local convenience store
because they don’t know what
else to do with their money
while they’re waiting to die

I had a panic attack in an American Eagle dressing room recently.
As I sobbed quietly
and begged my racing heart
to please slow the **** down,
I listened to the chatter in the adjacent stalls;
other girls proclaiming their depression because
that top did not come in their size.
My mother stood
on the other side
of the locked door, suggesting
that I just
"stop."

While I struggled to catch my breath,
my mother went out to the floor,
feeling the need to tell the tale
of her poor daughter who lost everything
to the sales clerks and managerial staff.
They brought me water
and a cookie
and cleared out
the dressing room.
It's too bad that my demons didn't really give a ****
about their kind gestures.

Eventually, I was able to **** in air long enough
to call out to my mother and tell her
I needed to go home now, please.
I hid my face from the customers in the store
casting condemning looks in my direction.
I was ashamed, because I knew
everyone else knew
and I never want
people seeing me
like that.
But,
at least we got
a 50% discount.