Superstore

BY LILIANA CAREY

We didn’t really know what to do with our time,
The mystifying vastness of a Sunday night
The hours slip away inconsequentially
Until we wake up in the same place we started

I got in my car and drove to your house 
And we ended up going to the superstore, since what else was there to do
We went inside to buy ice cream
A pint of cookie dough for you, strawberry for me 

We sat cross-legged on the front seats of the car,
Heat blasting to mask the bitter January cold outside
And we filled the air between us, the time before us, 
With words and words and words

We tell each other those thoughts about the future
That we would love to think are ours alone
I love that you’re the kind of person I can talk to for hours
But I’ll never tell you what you mean to me

The windows begin to fog up
And the world outside, the shrill sirens and winter winds,
The neon red signs on the front of the store
And the fluorescent streetlights of the lot

The false brightness of the world, 
Harsh and bright, blindingly bright
It all fades away with the mist,
Into a cold subdued glow, an eerily beautiful mosaic of color

And though the headlights light up the sidewalk in front of us
The people walking into the grocer’s next door 
Are nothing but a blur, an afterthought, 
The echo of a voice from a lost suburban world

The world outside that becomes a fever dream
And all my dreams are yours now, and yours are mine,
And nothing else is real
Except for the wildest depths of our imaginations

And maybe someday when I come back to this town
When I become a stranger to myself
I’ll remember how naive we were that night
To think we were so far above this sedentary suburbia

For the wind still whistles through us
As I wander through the same fluorescent aisles of the superstore
And our thoughts, our hopes, our secrets are lost
To the mystifying vastness of a Sunday night.

About the Author

Liliana Carey is a 17-year-old student at John Jay High School in Cross River, New York. Through her poetry she attempts to capture the themes of youth and maturity through the lens of personal experience.