He asked me why I looked at the floor

He asked me why I looked at the floor

when the line started moving toward the front.

I didn't tell him about the junk drawer,

the way batteries and dead pens settle

at the bottom of everything we forget to throw out.

I found the prayer card this morning

under a tangled knot of rubber bands.

Uncle Jim’s face is a grid of grainy dots,

trapped in a plastic sleeve that’s given up

on being clear or protective.

The corners are sharp enough to draw a line

across my thumb, the lamination peeling back

in a dry, yellow curl.

It smells like the incense in the 'good room,'

that heavy, suffocating sweetness

that made me want to run outside

and breathe in the exhaust of the idling hearse.