I think sometimes about my old customers.
The ones who died young.
There were so many of them: painters, roofers,
landscapers, handymen. Salts
of the earth.
Some had been coming into my shop
for decades, always with the sense
that it would go on like that forever,
the two of us – shopkeeper and customer –
Sisyphus and Tantalus playing our little roles
in our mutual little corner
of hell, impervious
to any profound or meaningful life changes.
But then one day,
you’d hear it
2nd or 3rd hand: R. had a massive heart attack
while sealing a customer’s driveway;
B. died of throat cancer; F. overdosed on painkillers;
carbon monoxide got P.
One after another they peeled away,
most of them leaving very little behind,
just a few meager possessions,
a handful of memories
and a reminder of what precarious
ground we all stand on.
I think sometimes about my old customers.
I think about them the way I think about
how the sun would pour into the shop
in the early mornings,
filling the room with bouncing light,
and a feeling
of something glorious yet incomprehensible
contained within it, something that hung
suspended in the air
for about a half-hour or so,
then poured out through the southern windows,
as though it had no business
being there.
I think sometimes about my old customers.
I think about how they
were too good
for what little
lives they were granted.
M.P. Powers lives with one foot in Berlin, Germany, and the other in South Florida, where he rents out construction equipment. He is the editor of 11 Mag Berlin, and has been published recently in Red Fez, Chiron Review, Glitchwords, The Daily Drunk, Neuro Logical and others. He tweets here: @mppowers1132
