by Neil Carpathios

How better to snicker
at vanity
than to stall
at a grocery checkout,
not moving,
remembering once reading
the average human spends
one hour a day waiting,
which is almost three years
in a lifetime,
and even though you see
at the front of the line
a woman sorting coins,
old, mumbling,
with holes in her sweater,
you feel aggravation
like a sewing machine
in your chest
working its thread,
spinning a cocoon
surrounding, separating
you from everyone—

then, finally,
she drops coins
into the clerk’s open hand,
he counts,
but gives some back
and says
“keep enough for bus fare,”
as if you were placed
exactly here,
this moment,
to witness the woman’s
toothless grin,
the clerk’s soft eyes,
to feel something stir
like wings inside unfolding.