Clocking Out

The smell of wet cardboard is a second skin

and the walk-in freezer is still in my hair,

that dry, chemical frost that sticks to the lungs

long after the metal door has clicked shut.

I stood in the lot where the sodium light

flickers like a dying heart over the asphalt,

and saw the three lines you sent while I was

breaking down boxes of frozen peas.

Forty minutes ago, you decided we were done

and I was busy checking the expiration dates

on the 2% milk, and now there is a gray slurry

of slush and motor oil by my boot, reflecting

the word 'Sorry' in a vibrating, jagged font.