Kyle Still Owes

Above the dispenser, black marker—

small and level, the kind of writing

that means someone stood here

and took their time. Five words:

Kyle still owes me a summer.

Not a phone number. Not a slur.

Not the usual bathroom gospel.

Just one person's open nerve

pressed flat to beige metal

in a rest stop on I-90,

somewhere past the wind turbines

that spin whether anyone's watching or not.

I stood there longer than a man should stand

in a stall, reading it over

like it might change. It didn't.

I washed my hands. Forgot

to dry them. Walked back out

to the parking lot, the families

with their coolers and their dogs,

everybody headed somewhere definite,

and I kept thinking about the marker—

how someone carried it in a pocket,

how they uncapped it,

how they pressed the felt tip down

and wrote the one thing

they couldn't keep inside their body

anymore, then drove away.

And Kyle doesn't know.

Kyle probably doesn't know.