Close your eyes they say Picture a beach

Close your eyes, they say. Picture a beach.

But the beach is full of plastic grocery bags

and that thing Mr. Henderson said in fourth grade

about how I'd never be a leader.

My head isn't a temple. It's a coat pocket.

Stuffed with old receipts from 2018,

a gum wrapper that's lost its stick,

and the specific, crushing weight of remembering

every time I said 'you too' to a waiter.