DAY TO DAY
DAY TO DAY
There’s a couple
down the street
living on top of a small store.
They work there every day
selling odds and ends
things that fall apart
after two or three uses.
They don’t speak English very well
and must be touching their seventies by now.
The man is missing most of his teeth,
replaced with mixed golds and silvers
and the woman has a laugh
like a nervous tick
that sounds like she sleeps in a helium balloon.
If I stayed here my whole life
chances are I’d go in one day
to buy some razors, or a pack of batteries
and one of them would be gone.
Perhaps the wife.
Perhaps the husband.
One would go,
vanished from the landscape,
leaving the other behind
to tend the shop,
pay the rent,
sweep the filthy sidewalk.
One would go
and one would stay
and would I even notice?