Elegy at the 7-Eleven by Jeff Cove

Elegy at the 7-Eleven

The man at the register
doesn’t look up.
A forty-ounce beer in one hand,
cheap flowers in the other—
pink lilies curled like smoke,
wrapped in plastic.

For a moment,
he stands there holding both
like he isn’t sure
which one the night is for.

He sets the flowers down—
not with anger,
not regret,
just
a quiet return.

The cashier scans the bottle.
Outside, the light flickers.
There’s no one to bring flowers to.
Not tonight.

*

Jeff Cove lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He has been writing haiku since high school—seventeen syllables taught him how to compress meaning and leave space for silence. He works as a translator between the technical and the emotional, finding poetry in systems, silence, and the absurd. His work is forthcoming in Pictura Journal and has appeared in The Daily Drunk. He writes at https://jeffcove.com/