New love always hurts
the most when it is broken. Our teacher has stopped
for a cigarette and we have gone looking
for penny candies,
so that we can forget what
we’ve lost.
Tobacco, sugar, salt,
the remedies to our longing.

The general store is marked by signs
held by rusted nails,
and late night booze.
As she takes a drag from her
cigarette, she tells us to look for the bullet holes,
by the bottles.

It's not the photo of a moose posing by the door
or the yellow stained newspapers,
piled high,
or even the wrinkles in the clerk's face
that tell the age of this place.
Instead it is the dust, the air,
and the chipped paint. In those
I can smell mobs of children
grasping for sweets, tourists buying tacky hats—
Ripton Vermont General Store
botched robberies, and fickle mothers who only
came for milk.

We grab our chips and our pastel sweets,
two of every flavor, one for each of us.
As my friend pays for our memories, I can only think
about the tragedy of penny candies
that cost a nickle and a dime.
I wait hoping equally not be noticed,
and to be requested to stay. For a moment
I think my dream has become reality
When the woman behind the counter asks me
to hook the door open
for a breeze.

My friend has paid, and we are now
both
out of money and yet I wished we brought more
So we could never stop buying
and never be asked to leave.
I wished to be another photo on the wall,
above a golden plaque—
Best Customers.
On our way out I am still looking
for the bullet holes.

We meet again by the car,
And our teacher asks us if we have gotten
all that we need.
I say yes because it is bad to be greedy,
I know I will never have enough.
Quietly, maybe even happily, we drive
down the mountain, saying silent goodbyes
to the earth which holds onto so many memories—
Frost, Dickinson, Asimov.
As the green of the hills begins to fade from behind us,
we slowly unfold the pixie sized candies,
starting with the caramel which
is both sweet and salty.