Store Credit

The line is a slow crawl toward the counter

under lights that make everyone look like a ghost.

I’m holding the box for a high-end blender,

the kind of machine for the version of me

who drinks greens and runs four miles at dawn.

That guy didn't make it past Tuesday.

I used it once to pulverize a handful of leaves

until they were a thick, swampy sludge.

Now, there’s a tiny fleck of dried kale

stuck under the plastic rim of the base,

a green mark of my failure to be better.

The clerk doesn't even look at the smudge.

She just asks if anything was wrong with it,

and I want to say I just wasn't the right shape

to fit the life the manual promised.

She hands me a plastic card with a balance

and I walk back out into the heat,

looking for a place to buy a burger

and forget the way the liquid tasted.