"On My Way Home from the Grocery Store This Evening I Saw Three Things" by Sarah Henry

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One

a man crossing the parking lot with a thick summer tan

and I remembered the beaches of old, laying at the shoreline

and letting my body go in and out with the tide. I remembered

the sun soaked days at sixteen, which could’ve been a hundred

years ago or just 5, and the taste of pilfered vodka and ocean salt

on my tongue.

Two

the pack of kids who the neighbors always complain about,

whirling around a tight corner on their bikes. As they passed, their

laughter rang out in an earthquake tenor, and I wondered if they

were laughing at me, because this is always a possibility when you

pass a group of twelve-year-olds, and yet a very large and hardly

inconsequential part of me wanted to race home to my yellow,

rusted bike and join them.

Three

the mango tree dripping gold in my front yard, and I cried because

why can’t I blossom every winter and bear sweet, sticky fruit every spring?

But then again, I also cried tying my shoelaces this morning for no reason at all

except that I never learned how to tie them without first holding the laces

like bunny ears.

By the time I got home my heart was so sore that I reached in and pulled

it out, my heartstrings hanging like loose party streamers. I left it in an

Epsom salt bath to soak, stirred in a few drops of lavender oil, and fell

asleep on the living room rug.

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Sarah Henry (she/her) is a journalism student in Florida whose work has been published in P'an Ku and the forthcoming issue of Stuck in Notes. She spends her time mending clothes (badly) or talking nonsense to her pets. You can find her on Instagram @sarahhhenryy