Food of My Youth
by Andrea Potos

Home from school at lunchtime, my mom’s
grilled cheese on Wonder bread, toasted
like peak autumn on my plate beside
a dollop of cinnamon applesauce,
a mound of Lay’s potato chips;

the soda fountain at the back of Fitzgerald Pharmacy–
strawberry phosphates, root beer floats
and banana splits for the ravenous;
red vinyl stools that spun and spun around
like time in a circle that wouldn’t stop until I said so;

and down the block from there–Winkie’s Variety Store
with shelves and shelves of Mallo Cups and Junior Mints,
long stalks of Charleston Chews, boxes of Juju B’s,
Milk Duds that made such sticky teeth;
lastly, near those shelves, the glass counter

where a local, blasé teenager doled out Winkie’s famed
chocolate-covered peanuts, scooped them
into tissue-thin bags, the chocolate often spotted
with a tracing of white clouds, though we believed in
nothing like staleness or old age back then, the world
was only delicious and ours for the tasting.



 

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