Third Shift

Third Shift

POETRY

By Kellam Ayres

He sits shotgun in the car

he’d sold to Maris for a dollar

while she drives him to the hospital.

It’s spring­time.

He holds a dish­tow­el dark with blood

between his hands.

Watch­ing a pair of cardinals,

he’d shat­tered a coffee mug on the back stoop

and the pieces were sharp as hell,

he told her, and sliced his goddamn

thumb before he even knew what happened.

He doesn’t do well with blood.

He works the third shift

at a ware­house, packing beauty products

into boxes. He takes his meal break

in the middle of the night—the solemnness

of men eating dinner at three a.m.,

hearing the weak sound of plastic forks

on Tup­per­ware, then a bell, and back

to the floor until sun up.

Now he’s peeling back the dishtowel,

glimps­ing the damage, but she tells him

to knock it off, keep the pres­sure on.

Maris guesses he’ll need about ten stitches

but keeps this to herself.

She wasn’t far off, but he still makes

his shift, thank god, and after

a long day he drives home

from work in first light, the windows

rolled down to dilute the cologne

he’d found in a bin of dis­count­ed items,

which he’d slapped with his good hand

onto the pulse point in his neck.

This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 19. Support local book­sellers and inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ers by order­ing a print copy of the mag­a­zine.

Photo by Janko Ferlič 



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