Snowglobe

It is late and I want to sleep

but the two girls who work at the gas-station-convenience store

next door have gotten out of work and it’s 2AM and they are laughing

and scraping their cars and I want to peek out the window to see

them push their little plastic scrapers over their early 90s models

Fords and toss snowballs and talk about “Jaime just called” and “God girl, you’re

graced” and I wonder how they will spend the minimum wage

they made tonight, a slow night, with everyone staying in

because of the storm, whether Jaime will take the tall one

out (I recognize her voice from when I buy milk every other

day for my child) and whether she will say My Treat!  Or

maybe they will go to a bar, since they seem like they may

almost be that age, though I doubt it, it is so hard

for me to tell now, and they will drink beers

and dance and tenderly wipe the sweat

off of each other’s faces, but then I wonder about the other

girl, where will she go, now that they have started their cars

and I hear their engines about to roar but they don’t, only idle

and idle and I figure they are warming them to get the ice that was too hard

for their little plastic scrapers but they just sit there

so finally I rise from my chair and peek out my curtain

and am startled to see them both in the front seat of the tall girl’s car

and the other one, the one who I think is prettier and who says to my son,

hey sport when he comes in and once tugged his hat over his eyes, she is crying,

crying and saying something I can't hear over the engine's

idle, some song is playing something hard on their radio and the snow

is falling and the tall girl is staring up through the windshield and I can’t make out

her expression through the fog whether she is upset or wondering come on

how can I get out of this and get home cause I’m tired when I see her bend

over and take the other girl’s head in her hands and now I can’t get to bed

and they are still holding onto each other and the whole world is snowing all at once like a snowglobe and everything has become fragile and holy, amen.

 

Sean Thomas Daugherty, All You Ask for Is Longing: New and Selected Poems (BOA Editions, 2014)