SandScript 2021

GROUNDHOG DAY
Salina Molina
On the day I found my first gray hair
Three and a half legs on a coyote
Wandered through my parking lot
In search of a restful place to lay
My face cringed with the uneven saunter
My heart broke at the pack animal’s loneliness
My soul wept for the anxious smile on its face
A dying coyote, always my February omen
On the day I found my first gray hair
Two pieces of first quarter moon
Hung in the air from a bright red string
Like a Raytheon-branded stress ball
Glowing fluorescent neon and needlessly
Forcing me back into a Spencer’s Gifts
So I can pay my formal respects
To versions of myself that never came to be
On the day I found my first gray hair
Sixteen-year-old me ditched class
In the body of a twenty-six-year-old
And felt like an asshole about it, but still
Insisted on grabbing anxiety’s hand, excuses’ leg
So I could run far, far away into an abyss with them
Where we swapped recipes and clicked pens
Sitting in a semicircle to feel less alone
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