Declined
 

My card got declined the other night trying to buy groceries.

It wouldn’t have been as bad had I not chosen to do self-checkout.

The second time my card got declined, the machine began to beep.

Each beep was louder than the last.

Other customers started wondering what was wrong.

Dutifully, the handsome young clerk ran over, his name badge whipping over his shoulder.

On the back of his badge, he had a barcode with which he could change almost anything.

With a quick swipe of his hand, he scanned it to access the inside of the machine.

He said we could undo everything I’d done.

Behind us, customers craned their necks; they wanted to watch him work.

It made me bashful, but only a little; this wasn’t the first time my card got declined.

Still, he was a wizard with the touch screen.

We started removing my items together, one by one.

I’d really wanted the Marble Swirl Coffee Cake, but at $8.99, it was the first to go.

The ice cream, too, he took away.

We agreed to try my card again.

We waited while the machine accessed my account.

We waited as if waiting for the sky to turn.

His eyes were large white pools; they looked like they were about to burst.

I was scared for him, but I didn’t know what to do.

When the machine beeped negative again, he exhaled hard and his shoulders gave way.

His whole being imploded like an old stadium on demolition day.

I said I was sorry and that I would put everything back, but he tightened his eyes and shook his head.

No. Try just the eggs, he said, I’ll cut the price in half.

I need to know this works.

With my last four dollars left till Friday, I bought fancy eggs half-off.

Eggs my roommate had asked me to pick up.

Look for the cheapest ones, they said, if it’s not too much.
 

Symptomatic
 

We couldn’t decide if we lived in a chessboard
         or medieval Templar, low light lost in the dust
of our checked floor, where I let our dead skin collect
         like we might one day try to resurrect ourselves, 
cell by dry cell. If it was a chessboard, then I was 
         its white knight—nothing so savior as beast
I galloped sideways from square to square, all night, 
         all year, black to white to black. I never stopped
talking poetics politics flipped flags everything
         under a moon which let me remind you daily 
distances itself from earth. First, I lost my thread, then my voice
         went. You would’ve left too, you confessed
last week, a teardrop wriggling into your 
         tequila, if only you’d believed I might’ve survived             
the loss. I wouldn’t have, would have
         sought out the subway’s steel, six pm—the shadow
of asking someone to marry you at a Sox game—
         I always was dramatic and direct. The round black
tunnel mimicking the mouths of the bystanders.
         There was no king, then, I served but my own self-
ishness I didn’t yet know to call illness (I
         wasn’t yet allowed to). A man needs a good excuse
to be horseback. A man needs a good excuse to be hoarse.