Wandering through a department store, we collapsed
together on a display couch and you leaned over to kiss me.
A shadow in the fluorescent light made us break apart.
We looked up to see an older woman standing over us.
We recognized her from the bus station, where she often
sang hymns and preached sermons through a bullhorn.
“Do y’all go to church?”
You said no. I said yes.
She smiled sadly down at me, singing as she walked away:
“And what does the light have to do with the darkness?”
V.C. McCabe is the author of Give the Bard a Tetanus Shot (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2019). Her work appears in many journals, including Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, The Minnesota Review, and Entropy, and will be featured in an ekphrastic exhibit at the FRANK Art Gallery in March. She has lived in Ireland, England, and West Virginia. She can be found online at vcmccabe.com and @vcmpoetry on Twitter.