“We’re all stories in the end,” by Rebecca Ferlotti

“We’re all stories in the end,”

the bar’s bathroom graffiti taunts:
grade school
scribbles, love proclamations.
I wrote my initials on a stall door
before I left school. And when I left the country,
I saw stalls in the middle of a Belgian red light district
on the way to an Irish pub.
I asked someone why
and they raised an eyebrow. I once saw a woman raise a glass of champagne
in a bathroom stall. She was kneeled
next to a hamburger. At a networking event, a man talked about hamburgers.
I asked him his favorite local spot
as we stood in the bathroom line.
“Definitely Wendy’s,” he said.
And stepped inside.

*

Rebecca Ferlotti (she/her) is a poet, nonfiction book editor, and chief content officer based in Ohio. Her work has been published in ELLIE, her local library’s poetry anthologies, and other magazines. She has presented at the Sigma Tau Delta conference both as a creative writing student at John Carroll University and as an alumna. Rebecca’s work also has been supported by the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop.