The woman who runs
the bowling alley snack bar
stopped wearing pink this year.

She slides us Cokes
in black and white, content
with drab formality, content to be

just another Sheila.
We don’t mind; we’re used to things
fading, the motions

of our loved ones growing still.
It might’ve mattered before—
it might’ve been a thing

to ponder over coffee
at the Ninth Street Cafe, but now
I’ve got a girlfriend, different soap

on the bathroom counter,
and a little gray in my hair.
We loved Sheila, but we love

anyone before they stop sinning,
before night weaves in
to their hard, elusive skin.

About the Author
Carl Boon is the author of the full-length collection Places & Names: Poems (The Nasiona Press, 2019). His writing has appeared in many journals and magazines, including Prairie Schooner, Posit, and The Maine Review. He received his Ph.D. in Twentieth-Century American Literature from Ohio University in 2007, and currently lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at Dokuz Eylül University.