Revelation in Retail
by Andrea Potos

They told me to leave the register;
I wandered over to ribbons,
to replenish all the spools where I could.
At my feet, a box of overstock.
I stood there, struck
by all the hues, announcing
their presence—red like the pith of each rose
in Queen Mary's garden,
silver with a sheen like etched
lightning in late summer.
And the green--oh the green—
the forest I once dream-walked
through and thought I had lost.
And then the ivory, gleaming
like the insides of a shell, or the pearlescent
sky on that morning my daughter
arrived in this world.



(previously published in Marrow of Summer)  

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