The Orange Store

 

                      

On the side of a gravel road,

it sits,

newly painted,

bright orange

and tilting towards the ground,

an old country grocery store;

The front is covered

with settled, grey gravel dust;

I was five

when my sister

first walked me

down the gravel road

to Middlebrook grocery,

The Orange Store;

But I grew into an adult

And the road grew into a major route;

The Orange Store

sits with old gravel dust

and a new exhaust film

in between a trailer park

and a shopping mall

and across from a mini-mart;

Old orange paint chips,

no longer bright,

lay among the gravel

that is only in the parking lot;

And yet I still walk there