Walking to the Corner Store for Candy, 1978

by Aaron McGuffin

My life has been a series of signals.
The moon, the waves
the blood of my childhood best friend
pooled around his black head like oil,
a Rorschach
on an inkblot of street.

What might you see?

when you dart across at dusk
when headlights are not on
when you bat your eyes like butterfly wings

that slick of heme
bleeding into asphalt rainbows
the rotating red beacons
the deafening sirens
wailing to your psychiatrist about why some memories
leave you unreached.

Stare.
Stare out his office window
while you light a candy cigarette
for two people no longer facing
one another.

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Aaron McGuffin is a poet and physician who writes in the mountains of Appalachia. He is completing an MFA in poetry at West Virginia Wesleyan University. His work explores the liminal space of whimsy and gravity in family, memory, medicine, and Appalachian life. His poems have appeared in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, Intima, Pharos, Literary Hatchet, As the Crow Flies, Red Ogre Journal, and ContiguousLyt, with work forthcoming in Appalachian Journal, Rat’s Ass Review, and Hobo Camp Review.