Doesn’t matter. Leave it there.
Move on, pull out, nothing’s on sale.
Let them roll over it, don’t even see it.
Leave it where it’s fallen.
Everyone can know, no one cares.
Do you care? Does it matter?
Hard math, that was. Hard truth.
Train leaves at five, never stops for flagging.
Train isn’t a taxi, eh? Shut up.
Move on and shut it out.
Could be a beggar. A thief.
Could sing for your supper.
Could lie for hours curled on the couch.
Or on the tracks, or take the last of it, board, move on.
Move out.
Leave the cart, you can do it.
Leave the aisle. Leave the hard light.
It’s wrong to leave it.
Sorry I’m in your way. Excuse my reach into your life.
What’s $3.99 less 18%?
How many days do you have left?
Do any days still have heft?
On the back you had written,
that feeling of leaving/like falling through ice
Leave it where it is.
Leave it where it lies.
In the meadow by the abandoned school bus.
White panties with blue flowers. Daisies bending to the wind.
What wasn’t new then? What isn’t old now?
Her hard kisses on your mouth.
♦
Lee D. Thompson was born and raised in Moncton, New Brunswick. His fiction has been published in five anthologies, including Random House’s Victory Meat, New Fiction from Atlantic Canada and Vagrant Press’s The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction, and in more than a dozen literary journals across Canada and the US. Lee’s first novel, S. a novel in [xxx] dreams, was published in 2008 by Broken Jaw Press. In addition to writing fiction, Lee is a guitarist and songwriter who records under the name Pipher.
♦♦♦
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