Hallie Fogarty

because I don’t know how to feel
sad without the physicality of it: the furrowed brow,

the slackjaw mouth, eyes glazed over, the weightless astronaut
arms. I go to the movies to try to feel something because I don’t

mind crying in front of crowded rooms and salty
tears accentuate the buttered popcorn. But all they’re playing

is one of the new Top Gun or Transformers movies and I can’t
bring myself to pay $13.19 to watch square-faced men shoot things

so I walk past the bathrooms and sneak into the back of one of the theaters.
I picture the safety of the dark parts of the swaths of trees that outline

my neighborhood and the highway that wraps itself around my state.
I try to worm my way out of the backwater lies I’ve told myself.

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