Merchant Copy

The wool is heavy with the smell of cedar

and three years of being tucked away.

I reached in for a glove but found

the ghost of a Tuesday in October.

The thermal paper has curled into a straw.

Two coffees and a side of rye toast

from a diner in a town where the wind

cuts right through the glass.

The ink has turned a bruised, ghostly blue,

fading at the edges like the truth

of why we stopped there in the first place.