Under the fluorescent strip above the tomatoes

Under the fluorescent strip above the tomatoes,

your face was doing the thing—

flattening, the way theirs did last week

when you told the joke and their mouth

stayed still like a line drawn

on paper that refused the pencil.

You didn't laugh at yourself either.

Neither did they.

In the window of the closed drugstore

you saw it happen again: that same

small death in your eyes, the lips

that couldn't quite remember

what a smile was supposed to do.

Maybe they were tired.

Maybe you were the one rejecting them first

and didn't know it.

But you'd already built the whole story—

how they hated you, how you could see it

in the small space where laughter should have lived.

The light made everyone look a little dead.

The light made it easy to believe.