Clocks

You ain’t making me cry tonight

a college-aged girl talks about what she
told her stepbrother over the phone to an

incoming high school senior
with a scrunchie-tied blond bun.

I stand and look over at the crumpled-up receipts
bouncing on the lumpy tiled floor like tumbleweeds.

I drink out of my Cameltop Chautauqua water bottle it’s like
being in that one Pablo Picasso painting with the melted clocks

Cash register                      10:47
Pepsi clock                         10:51
iPhone                               10:53

I lick the tip of my tongue damaged from last Thursday’s seizure,
and mark the bag in order for it to break the conformity of its

several hundred identical siblings. I hum quietly to myself as a new
mother comes in with three children two boxes of bottled water.

***

Water Bottle

Hold onto the lake of dissolved electrolyte
powder swimming in steaming hot plastic
that crinkles in the early-June sun, as you
high-five every pair of lungs strutting down
concrete in glamorized flesh suits,

hide the same ankle proximal to the pain that
hindered you from carrying clashing cymbals,
with your backpack awaiting your return like
a wartime wife, nestling a bottle of pre-frozen water
in a pocket near a Fruits Basket keychain

those fallen arches holding you back once again from flight.

***

Morgan Boyer is the author of The Serotonin Cradle (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and a graduate of Carlow University. Boyer has been featured in Kallisto Gaia Press, Thirty West Publishing House, Oyez Review, Pennsylvania English, and Voices from the Attic. Boyer is a neurodivergent bisexual woman who resides in Pittsburgh, PA.