from the line snaking around costco on a Saturday after a thunderstorm

Ally Noyes

photo credit: The Advocate

this is how it will be, now
wearing a handmade floral print mask, lined under a
party canopy
the one meant for jazz fest
in another timeline
in a world vibrating next to this one
humming in half step
with
(un)imaginable others

i put on earrings for this
to pick up 200 bottles of water for the prophets and musicians under the canopy of the overpass

(look down at the purple lines in the sidewalk, allow space between you and the man with a knee brace in front of you, this guy behind me is getting too close or am i getting too close? they’re wiping down each one of the carts damn i forgot the hand sanitizer in the car. it smells like cleaned up blood, wet asphalt, ammonia, iron)

don’t forget what it was like before
before sheets of plexiglas separated you and the cashier
before the sanitation workers went on a strike
(and right now, five days in, before they got everything they asked for, before we realized that we too are exploited we too must fight to claim what we make what we build how we heal. right now, before the hospital workers – janitors, prep cooks, doctors, speech
therapists, phlebotomists – all of
us
fought with all our heart and became a collection of pulsing cells worlds unto ourselves
attentive to the signals, the peptides and polysaccharides, that say: cell organ body
your work is to live / lucid / livid / love)

if we strike the chord just right, can we jump a half step?
the world after this one and before the next 
the one where I prescribe shelter and music and daffodils?

Ally Noyes (she/they) is an artist, perpetual student, and organizer. She is finishing her first year of medical school in New Orleans, Louisiana. They help run Lagniappe Literary Magazine, a fledgling creative outlet focused on the process of learning and experiencing medicine in Louisiana. @ally_noyes