“Are Your Emotions More or Less Intense?”
[rehab workbook]
I went to a psychic, & she told me I have an old soul,
says the Starbucks barista who resembles Cameron
Diaz, who’ll never be an old soul because she’s caught on film,
childlike. I want to reply with a trite line,
but what comes out is Thanks for the latte,
my thoughts too cluttered for quantum entanglements &
small talk. At eight, I was old, my eyes calculating
trajectories of escape, scanning my slightly-
feminine watch to figure out how long I had to wait.
My brain made other plans rather than commit
to now. Mind-weary, head-worn, terrified—
back then. Emotions stop aging for an addict,
according to the texts, as long as drugs
maintain their grip: if true, I’m in my twenties—
anxious, desperate for attention, happy for strange words
from the woman who makes hot drinks, despite
how I answer: hesitant, uncertain, my hand reaching
for the steel grip of the door more than half a room away.
About the Author: Ace Boggess is author of four books of poetry, most recently I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So (Unsolicited Press, 2018). His writing appears in Notre Dame Review, Rhino, North Dakota Quarterly, Rattle, and many other journals. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
More By Ace Boggess:
“Why Did You Try to Sober Up?”
Image Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: “Marble Bust of a Youth” (140 AD)
As It Ought To Be 