by Aparna Paul
& when my friend pulls up & the speaker starts crackling with some eldritch horror, & it asks,
do you want to die with that?
& my friend looks over at me & asks, well, do you?
& i say i’m good with just the pepsi, thanks
& the eldritch horror, profound & decrepit, wails like a thousand suns being born or the edge of a paper slicing through skin or your dad shutting the door on your family the morning that he dies
& my friend says, oh, i think they only have coke products here,
& i say, hm, then i guess a cherry coke
& my friend says, okay, a mcchicken, a cherry coke, plus can i get an answer the question unspoken in my heart?
because my friend is always saying shit like that,
especially in the mcdonald’s drive through
& this time the voice from the speaker is sweet dulcet caramel dripping off a spoon, a siren song in symphony,
& my friend says, damn, i think i’m a dollar short,
but it’s okay because i have two dollars in my pocket, & anyway, the prophecies are free here, free like the way any of us are, free as a man with an albatross around his neck, free as an albatross around a man’s neck, since the albatross is dead, and isn’t death a kind of freedom?, free like a limited time only BOGO sale at the Gap, free like you’ll still have to give up your firstborn son, but whatever, who’s having babies in this economy, anyway, not to mention your firstborn won’t be a sun, if anything they’ll be the MOON,
& we drive to the window
& my friend’s camry sounds like it might fall apart right there
& so might i, if i’m being honest
& i look into the black hole at the first window
or rather, it looks into me,
i blink first
& it becomes a murder of crows, silent, except to say
second window only tonight,
& then i say it, just for good measure,
second window only tonight,
& we’re at the second window,
which is a little grimy,
with a freckled bespectacled teen behind it,
& she looks like me, a study in personal time travel,
but when i ask my friend he says,
hey, doesn’t that guy look like me?
so it could be the whole world, or nothing at all
(like most things)
& i’m handed the cherry coke without much fanfare
& the teen leans out the window to whisper in my friend’s ear
& i strain to listen
but all i hear is the rustling of the first breeze that ever swept this earth,
& when my friend turns to me,
he says, the prophecy machine is down tonight. can i get a sip of your cherry coke?
& we drive away, dial-shifting through static,
as the world dissolves into whipping wind, fresh fizz,
& our laughter, spilling into empty eternity
Aparna Paul (she/her) is a writer, chemical engineer, banana bread enthusiast, & amateur crossword constructor based in Cambridge, MA. Her poetry & prose has been recognized by Reckoning, DMQ Review, & Gaining Ground, among others. She is the author of HOME FREE (Game Over Books, 2025), editor of the anthology Reflections of The Land (Literary Cleveland, 2022), and co-editor of GOOD SOUP mail magazine (@goodsoup.mag on insta!). She performs regularly, hosts occasionally, and slams sometimes at the Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge. When not writing, you can find her calling to a stranger on the street, saying, “Look! The moon!”