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There is the shopping center.
We walk there to steal
small things, smoke cigarettes.
I am twelve.
There is a reason for walking
an hour along the canal
to Calhoun Street, the iron bridge,
metal-signed shopping center
where storefronts glare silver
against pavement.
Where we steal
what we don't even want,
I finger plastic orange earrings in a bin,
stand on cracked tiles.
In the cool store, dust
settles on the merchandise,
identical objects in heaps.
I know so little,
I think the boys who make pizza
flirt with me
spinning aluminum pans on one finger.
I wear a halter top, I smoke menthol
cigarettes, I don't know yet
about inhaling.
The iron bridge leads to Trenton
over the muddy Delaware;
cars stop at a light
before they surge over the river.
I walk barefoot
on metal grating, read the sign
on the next bridge down,
TRENTON MAKES THE WORLD TAKES.
I hold my earrings.
The department store will shut down soon,
and the world will take us,
childhood closing its doors and registers,
our stolen treasures in our hands.

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Copyright © 2018 Kathryn Rhett All rights reserved
from Immortal Village
Carnegie Mellon University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission