When you run out of drugstore perfume

I first realized that gas bills have large eyes when I ran out of drugstore perfume.

They watched me clip my fingernails and coupons neatly.

Gripping onto tap water over sparkling cans, it was heavier to lift with thick clouds of gray fluoride.

There was always a beige check that stumbled onto the next.

For years, they collided.

When my world became survival, the only color I ever saw was green.

Every storefront was lime, every forest was emerald.

The glass bottle of change I kept in my bedroom closet was a mix of moss and fern.

My skin was olive, my hair was sage.

This world was green with envy.

Even when my college degree turned black, shopping trips from neighbors came out of gilded stores in packages of white.

Drugstore perfume didn't smell as nice as $500 crisp linen.

I always felt that my world revolved around paper and bits of metal with silly meanings.

Under the weight of silver and printing presses, having a butterknife would not crack them.

I think that perfume smelled sweeter when peonies grew in the green that had trapped me before.

When I didn't have enough for the electric current that kept my toothbrush running, wildflowers started to grow in open dirt.

Rainwater turned hot shades of embarrassment into roses, watered from arms of community.

I wasn't always going to be alone, with pine trees masking the next week ahead.

Cerulean and magenta started to swirl in the watering cans.

I won't always see green. My world will change.