bodega girl

“Three dollars and forty-five cents. Is this all for you today?”

The bodega cashier asks as I get out my method of pay

I smile at her, shift my shoulders and say,

“It is all that I’ve ever wanted. So long as it will stay.”

She smiles at the grape juice, mischievous she felt

As she screwed off the cap and spilled some on the belt.

I snarled at her, but stayed silent, and knelt

To grab a paper towel, and felt my patience melt

She maintained the same damn straight-toothed simper

Not a care in the world, as I stood and whimpered

Hands purple and wet, that grin was the clincher

Of my tight-laced, untrue, unapologetic tinder

“I paid for that juice,” I said with a frown

“Not all things last forever,” she shoots me straight down

Dashed dreams and the future, my white wedding gown

Stained by the red pigments, the marks all dry brown

Tears slip down my face, like oil and water

I try not to imagine what my mom thinks of her daughter

Oh to take pen and paper, and with it, to slaughter

This sixty-some inch, high damn tension squatter

“That’s my juice!” I yell “I earned it so fairly!”

She just laughs again. It feels so unfair to me.

She pours the rest on the belt, and places her hands squarely

Around my fragile wind pipe, and squeezes quite merrily.