a parallel life in franklin, nj

sometime between 7:42 a.m. on jan. 2 and 8:14 a.m. on jan. 3
our paths nearly crossed in that your feet and mine
both stomped up the steep blue-blaze trail nearest the river at Esopus Meadows
Me, dropping crumbs of Bocce’s Bakery turkey cranberry dog treats
You, dropping a folded receipt that announced:
At 10:35 and 8 seconds on the night of dec. 30
At a Walmart in Franklin NJ
You purchased:
1 book ($5.38)
1 Red Bull ($5.58)
The Purge on DVD ($5.00)
and an external keyboard ($42.97)
You paid $65.00 cash and received $2.17 in change

I looked up Franklin NJ when I got home and found
that it’s known as “the Fluorescent Mineral Capital of the World”
it is home to the Franklin Mineral Museum
brimming with geodes, ordinary exterior and sparkling within
The Sterling Hill Mine & Museum of Fluorescence, a rocky neon-scape
(which, forgive me, is technically in Ogdensberg)
AND The Gingerbread Castle (technically in Hamburg)
where on the top-most cookie turret in silvery spray paint it once read BBTM
which a cursory internet search
revealed might reference a 2015 album by The Weeknd
or a blood bank and transfusion machine, when used in conjunction
neither of which evoke a gingerbread castle
even in my non-linear cookie-obsessed mind

I calculated that,
although the external keyboard was the last item rung up
it must have been the first reason for your trip to Walmart at 10:35 and 8 seconds p.m. on dec 30
because my objective set of eyes subjected the other items to scrutiny
and decided they alone would not likely have necessitated
a late-night trip to Walmart during a pandemic

because I remember the desperation I felt
when my computer keyboard failed, one key at a time
along the asdf row several years back
and how I painstakingly typed sense into things by copying and pasting
the missing letters from web sites into my nonsensical words
until an exasperated girlfriend used her parents’ amazon prime account
to express mail me an external keyboard
which I used for two years, then no longer needed
when the computer self-destructed more completely
shortly after our relationship

Later I wondered, did you drink the Red Bull that night??
perhaps to fuel an evening of watching The Purge,
then the subsequent hours of not being able to sleep
having been deeply disturbed by watching The Purge
which many Rotten Tomatoes reviewers agree is deeply disturbing
in addition to being one of the worst films ever made