Now there is no need to take my pulse.
My friends leave trails of Reese’s Pieces
where I used to walk, but I choose
different paths, searching

for the least familiar. There
I will find an empty mothership awaiting me,
sterile and unsympathetic and inhuman,
destination thankfully unknown.

Feeling at home frightens me.
I like to keep myself on edge,
breaking glasses on the kitchen floor
so that I never have a full set,

running out of milk in the mornings,
misplacing important bills
with red stamps on the envelopes like
“RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED”
and “IMPORTANT NOTICE.”

When my mothership sends me a card,
it will be stamped with something
seemingly nonsensical but secretly symbolic,
like “HEINZ 57 VARIETIES.”

The ketchup on my burger
will subsequently taste suspicious,
and the next time I look in the mirror
I will not be able to find my veins.

Elizabeth Wilcox teaches American Literature to reluctant high school students in Virginia. This is one of her first published poems, though she also has poetry forthcoming in HazMat Literary Review. She is currently writing something which may or may not be a novel.