Poetry by T.J. Butler

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Dining With Junkies on the Nod
​
It stinks in here like
cat-piss-ammonia and summer camp latrines 
in this crappy apartment I used to like
where the roaches feel elegant
feeding off the buffet you’ve laid.
I’ve picked up a magazine from the floor,
maybe to build a nest to sit on like
little girls are taught to do in public restrooms
but I don’t want to sit on the glazed pages of 
Miss July
so I lean into the median strip 
of the insect highway, 
alive on your kitchen wall.
“No thank you, none for me,”
I say to your girlfriend
slouched near a plate of dry, crusted spaghetti.
She ignores me. I guess I missed the first course.
You’ve already started on dessert,
sharing sweets with your tiny dinner guests 
and I realize maybe three’s a crowd
so I leave and do not close the door behind me.
(It was cracked open when I came in.)
My mother asks me why I’m back so soon
and I lie to her-- I say I only went over
to get back that picture I gave you,
the one with the huge seventies-style butterfly with
love painted in swirls across its wings.
But all I can think of is your ex-girlfriend in my seat. 
I guess it’s not my night for
dining with junkies on the nod. 

​

T.J. Butler lives on a sailboat with her husband and dog. She writes fiction and essays that are not all fun and games. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Pembroke, Levee, New Plains Review, Flash Fiction Online, Tahoma Literary Review, New South, and others. Find her at @aGalWithNoName and TJButlerAuthor.com.

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