a house can feel like a whole world

when you’re lying in your bed at 4 a.m.,

too early to rise in a coup against the lingering stars,

too late for the soft black of the backs of eyelids to last long enough,

Your polaroids next to my polaroids

Yours taken with your ‘new’ polaroid camera (1960)

Mine taken with my friend’s ‘new’ polaroid camera (2017)

Yours, yellowed, colors fading,

Mine, stark white with bold colors.

I break down in the supermarket grocery aisles

because I only have five minutes to make the choice

between a variety of granola bars.

screaming letters warn

cautioning, threatening

but I lean in

revel in the reveal 

most don’t like spoilers

but I live for them