Spring Annual 2022: “Will There Be A Time” by Shana Ross

~

Will There Be A Time
for Liz


Serious question: does it ever
reach a time where the awkward
teen years are done, the stress of
young adulthood and figuring out
has leveled off, so you can just breathe
for a sec and enjoy this life?
Because I am not there yet;
I don’t think I missed it going by
Even at full speed – I would have noticed.
Is it ever coming? Serious
answer: my dear, you have to
stop buying your fucks at Costco
in the industrial multipacks.
Let yourself run out or ration
a couple of overpriced artisan ones
per year. When you have no more
left, things get wild. Or so I am
told. My own pantry is still full and I
am agonized but I can see the “best
by” dates expiring and receding, out,
out into the distance like a scream.

~

Shana Ross


Shana Ross spent time as both a member of a co-ed percussion fraternity and the PTA.  She took a long while mostly authoring a stable life; since returning to written work, her poetry and fiction have appeared in Gone Lawn, Kissing Dynamite, Swamp Ape Review, SWWIM and more.  Her first chapbook, Heavy Little Things (Finishing Line Press) is forthcoming in 2022. An editor for Luna Station Quarterly, she rarely tweets @shanakatzross.


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