2023



We made a country

out of the threadbare parking lot–
mosquitos orbiting our ankles

in these oil-slick galaxies spun
from spilled diesel, the sun sealing

our backs to the hood of your dad’s car.
In one hand, your slushie wilted

into a flower – between sips, bleeding
against your palm. Soft, too warm

for permanence. Something about the sky was
trying too hard: all that pink. You laughed

like you didn’t want to mean it. That laugh
still hums behind the shelves at CVS

when I walk past anything blue-raspberry.
You promised to call. Instead: the hum

of the AC still running, the shadow
your jeans left still pressed into the vinyl

of the passenger seat, catching wrappers and quarters
gone wishless, sometimes even my hand –

just to feel the shape of what’s gone.
I kept the wristband from the waterpark, now

faded moonless inside my backpack’s lining.
Once, outside a rest stop in Delaware, I even followed

the back of someone else’s head, convinced
it was yours. With nowhere to land, the sun

stalled, idling by the pumps, burning
gold into anything that will welcome its touch.