She stood behind the register
at the gas station counter.
Is it Robin's day off, I ask, and
No, she replies, I’m the manager. I
told Robin use your vacation before
the end of the year, you can’t carry it
over, I told her. Me, I'm not
taking mine. My husband died 2
weeks ago yesterday and I
was back to work the next
morning. It's okay – 28
years I walk in this door, and 8,
sometimes 10
hours later leave it all behind;
I’m fine. It's better to be here. My
boys call; I look up at his urn -
they won't stop worrying about me,
I tell him.
Still talk to him - 37
years, a habit, I guess.
Hard to stop.
It was a massive heart attack, 3
bypass surgeries. Still we thought
he had another 5 or 6
years left. Had a doctor's appointment the
day of his death (that's how
much we didn't expect it).
62.
Thank you, honey,
that's 28 dollars and 59 cents.
*****
I had meant to write about how grey
and cold the morning was, how I
was late for work, then suddenly alert in
that garish green and yellow station,
how I couldn't place her vaguely foreign
accent, how each respiration caught like
some small, trapped bird, how I whispered
Sorry (oh, useless word), and how I reached to
hold her hand while an old man
rubbed his palms together and moved slowly
to the till.
But then, that would have been a
poem about me, and not about a woman
I cannot name, and not about how numbers
(oh, the numbers) framed her pain.