“Okay… I know it’s been a minute since our last post but I’ve read all your lovely comments and don’t you worry, the house reveal is coming soon. We are still working on renovations; things have just been put back a little. Honestly, really, I just needed some me time, you know? I’ve just been in somewhat of a funk lately, since. Um, well ever since, well, so I’m at Target, right? We’d been working all day on the house, it was already dark, we were low on groceries, and I just wanted something easy for dinner so I run in to get the stuff for a caprese salad and they’re all out of basil like, how fucking hard is it to keep fresh basil? Anyways, by this point, I’m already pissed, right? So I walk around the store to clear my head and there’s this homeless man—though, to be fair, when I asked him if he was homeless, he said he wasn’t actually homeless. My bad. Maybe if you had bothered to wear shoes and your hoodie wasn’t covered in holes, I wouldn’t have assumed you’re homeless, right? So, anyways, this man is just standing on the opposite end of the aisle. He’s just staring right into my soul, you know? So I walk up and ask him, ‘are you homeless?’ and he says,
‘I am not homeless. I am dead. I just died in that parking lot. My body baked in the sun, sublimated to soul; I transcended, came face to face with our beloved creator. I told him how much I loved him, how much I’ve prayed, and how dearly I’ve enjoyed his forgiveness but, you see…he didn’t know my name. He brushed me off like a father kicking his needy. bastard. toddler. So you know what I did? I pulled out my gun. and shot him. in the head. I shot god dead, I did. But you can’t say he didn’t deserve it. And now, I don’t know if I floated up or down. All I know’s I passed a gate that said some shit in latin and… I woke up. in that backseat. dehydrated as hell. And all I wanted was a fucking Pepsi. I dug around in my glovebox for some change and, well, I’m here to buy that Pepsi.’”
And with that, I got off my phone. The old saying, the city never sleeps, is true but 3AM bogs down my eyelids and I needed, desperately, to get out of the house—if only
for a minute. The night was peaceful enough except for an ambulance in the distance. Sometimes it sounded like it was getting closer. Sometimes, like it was running away.
It must have been twenty minutes before I saw another body, standing on the opposite end of the intersection. From underneath his tattered hoodie, he yelled out,
“He doesn’t know your name.”
I yell back,
“What?”
He screams,
“Everybody who has ever loved you will die. And he doesn’t know their names.”
I continue meandering the streets till I find the highway. A Phillip's 66 shines like the North Star and I follow.
There’s something about the broken glass in the parking lot that makes it the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The man at the counter asks me,
“Why are you here?”
I yell back,
“i am here to buy a Pepsi.”
Note from the author:
When I submitted an early draft of this poem for critique, the most substantive comment my instructor made was that I needed to shorten the “homeless man’s” speech because “nobody would listen to a homeless person speak for that long”— no comment was made of the contents of his speech, just the length. I just wanted to point out that the first section of dialogue is longer than the second section, but they had no notes on the first; they didn’t think it needed to be shortened. This comment has stuck with me, but please note: I did not shorten his speech. It is the only piece of this poem that remains unedited from that early draft.
Author Bio
Odin Meadows is a graduate student currently living and working in central Illinois. He is most interested in writing poetry and horror that explores themes of bodily agency, the perception and treatment of bodies, and the nature of violence.
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