Hidden Costs
that every parent, coupled or alone, asked for a grapefruit
and titos to ritualize their saturdays, and it had to be me
to provide, to carry croissants toward a very warm box
that it would be time to go home eventually, everyone
out of money, apron to the wayside I still greeted the door
and glimpsed the discoveries strangers made outside
my cheeks turned into a portrait of the weather, stable
unyielding little cooks, she made an X across her chest
to indicate a wall, when the wall would be demolished
was not up to her, though it could be, if you were good here
you must be good there too, I wished for muscle
mass that would propel me in slow motion, I wished
to not look back, as I have not done in this poem
I wished foolishly to let each feeling burn within me
slowly enough that I would rely on objects to dictate
time by red and green light, the quart of juice now empty
or even smaller units, the disappearance of olives
I wonder aloud how the blossom above could
HANNAH TREASURE is a recent graduate of Brooklyn College’s MFA program in poetry. She is also an adjunct lecturer in Brooklyn College’s English Department and a server in the West Village. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Cordella Magazine, Sonora Review, The Shanghai Literary Review, and FORTH.
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