I’ve always loved the way the witch alders,
studding the bypass shoulders by the airport,
grow red in the fall, their scarlet tentacles the shade
of afternoon. It’s too bad they belong to you.

The black gum trees across from the police station
crawl like wooly tarantula legs into the pale sky,
but I rarely see them now, the way I don’t see
the fog-breathed gas station beer cave, the red sushi sign.

I have the grocery store that never had your pretzels,
the car wash with the spidering palm tree logo,
the small manmade lake near the gas company
that in late fall collects ducks like misshapen stars.

I can’t go to the bigger hardware store,
the one cottoned with spring flowers on the sidewalk
next to the Italian place. You could be there,
although you weren’t one for fixing things.

I gave up the library; you gave me the new liquor store.
I know you shop at the supermarket lined with evergreens;
you may as well live there, so I never go.
Instead I watch the sunrise, knowing the sunset will become yours.

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Header photograph by Holly Pelesky
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson