Can’t be so, feeling fifteen again,
doing inventory on the night shift
in a supermarket where linoleum glows
but does not click, standing alone in
an empty aisle of nightmare florescence,
next to shelves of canned vegetables, boxes
of facial tissue, paper towels, laundry soap,
cleansers, disinfectants, abandonment,
suspended time, echoes of old men
with hearing aids saying “Howdy”
to friends they haven’t seen in years
Then a wrong turn down another aisle
soon to be filled with the chatter of women
pushing carts loaded with chicken, tuna,
juices, salad dressing, movie magazines,
and the faces of those whose only dirt spills
into disposable diapers and who will look up
at me sacking groceries on the morning shift
with smiles and slobber and, damn them,
those Cherrios eyes