The lineman climbing up the telephone pole shouts down to tell me I'm beautiful. You sure got pretty eyes, one of the roadworkers says. The screech of power tools fades to a murmur, and all the roadworkers stare as I pass by on the way to the grocery store. I have the best smile that homeless man living behind the Ace Hardware has ever seen. The longest legs, the cutest dimples. While I wait to use the crosswalk, two men at the bus stop ask me if I've considered modeling. When I tell them I'm in college, they tell me to drop out. They snicker and plan my career. The cars slow; I cross the street. A horn honks. Someone stumbles out of a storefront and shouts something at me I can't decipher. Whatever he said makes the two men burst into laughter. The grocery store looms into view, and I'm about to walk inside when a man flags me down and demands fifty cents. Help me out, sister, he says, and because he called me sister instead of sweetie or honey or sugar, I give him another look: graying hair, frayed flannel, eyes like milk gone sour. Sure, I have fifty cents. I reach into my wallet, hand him two quarters. Maybe you got two more, he says, but I don't. Well, all right—what are you studying? An unexpected question. Poetry, I tell him. Ooh, poetry! What do you write about? Everything, I say. About my little sister and gasoline rainbows and boys who've cracked my heart and creatures that live at the bottom of the ocean and climbing pecan trees in the backyard and those days when I feel so stranded that I want to build a signal fire and holler at the sky until an airplane comes and takes me home. Most things I just can't make sense of unless they're broken into stanzas. I want to tell him all of this, but instead he asks, you got a boyfriend? No, I don't. I think you oughta get yourself an older man, someone like me, he says. He looks me in the eye and says, me and you could get married. Whattaya say? Joints cracking, he gets down on one knee. The entire parking lot stops to watch. Teenagers nudge each other, hold up their cell phones and snicker. Older women cluck their tongues and roll their eyes. I keep waiting for one of them to come over and smack this man with one of their faux snakeskin handbags, but they just stand there, shaking their heads. Say yes, the man says, still kneeling. I ain't got a ring, but I know you don't care about that, baby. Say yes! one of the teenage boys shouts, and people begin chanting: yes, yes, yes. Good lord, a woman mutters, and she gets into her car. The best I can do is shut my eyes and think about home. Whenever I'm there, I still hold my little sister's hand when we go places, even though she's twelve and too old to wander off. I'm not a baby anymore, she protests, but whenever I reach for her hand, she grabs mine and holds it tight.

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Aleyna Rentz has had work in Hobart, Barrelhouse, Passages North and others. She lives in Baltimore.

Read her postcard.

Read more of her work in the archive.

Detail of art on main page by William Struby.





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