I just couldn’t admit I wanted that pack of cinnamon gum
as she held it out, the two of us sitting in the silver minivan

in front of the church, this pristine act of kindness I couldn’t accept because I was fourteen and tinged with a mean streak

marring my wholesomeness, mean enough for me to rebuff
the Ice Breakers which merited an extra trip to the gas station

across the freeway even though I never asked, extra on top of
her daily drudges to Little Rock and back between the soulless

concrete barricades lacerated by traffic, the scrambled grocery
store detours for milk and ground beef, robotic rounds spent

restocking dozens of vending machines peppered throughout
the small business breakrooms of Lonoke, White, and Pulaski

counties in her precious free time and it took me twenty years
and hundreds of drives down that same dilapidated interstate

to start shouldering her struggle, to understand the kind of love
wrapped in light aluminum paper, pocketed and carried quietly

during life’s opaque days like an amulet, a secret charm, or
any blessed thing shining straight through the looming dark.