Nevaeh

My first day on the run brings me to
a pit-stop café beneath a haloey
sign that radiates a promise
of pancakes and milkshakes

I blow into my straw
a brew of pink poison
with blistering bubbles
that splatter onto
the plastic menu

Number 53. reminds me
too much of home, of my sister
dribbling raspberry jam onto her fingertip
wearing it like lipstick
until father slaps it off
with the back of his hand

A waitress with hair like red licorice
asks me what I’m reading and I show her
my battered cover of Seventeen
the teen romance issue I carry with
me like the bible

She asks me my name and when she looks
amazed I tell her it’s just heaven spelled
backwards and she sits down beside me with
her hand over mine

You know what I think?

All this, right here, this is heaven. We just haven’t realized it yet.

Her breath washes over me
a mantel of menthol nicotine
mixed with the ammonia
from her freshly dyed head

sucking on my straw I imagine
holding her Midnight Blue iris like a
crystal ball, will I grow up to be
just like her?

The door opens
my mother, she’s here
I curl beneath the table like a hedge hog
but the waitress, she won’t let go of my hand
I rock, back and forth over the cold buttery floor

and close my eyes, away from here.