Lifeless birthday cards give way
to gift bags clinging onto wires,
their glitter plopping on brown carpet that had
shouldered too many feet and
seen too many years.
Stacks of paper abound,
the trees from which this all sprung
and died for our holiday packages.
It is an evergreen graveyard,
or a cardboard warzone,
stitched together with duct tape.
Seniors shuffle in their queue,
frames twisted like their cane,
scratching at the snowy fuzz on their necks,
only for it to fall
and melt among the birthday glitter.
In the northwest corner,
where the yellow wall meets the popcorn ceiling
lies a graying spider in its shoddy web,
the fortieth descendant of a
long line of UPS arachnids.
His home has escaped the annual vacuuming,
silk strands dotted with
traces of asbestos from the 60s.
It is just one employee today,
and one employee every day,
for there is no need for fast service
when the clientele is slow.
You groan with every action, your bones
trembling within your frame as if to burst
free and set fire to the store, sparked
from the fire in your heart.
But with each day, that blaze quells—
this is not your dream,
but this is your fate.
Tomorrow is the same:
the cards and bags and paper,
the seniors and spiders and you,
all this time at the UPS store.