Alexis Sears

When the Woman at Chase Bank Suspects I'm a Criminal

The fog and I feel especially hazy this morning.

I trudge through errands, (stir) crazy this morning.

At the ATM, a woman in a zebra jacket watches. She grips her

cash, gum wrapped around her pinky. Her hair? Clearly, she felt lazy this morning.

“Watcha doin’ there?” She leans against the wall. My dress is calf-length with

a sunflower. I should have worn the less suspicious one, with the daisy, this morning.

The answer’s pretty obvious. What do we all do at the ATM?

We plan our lunches. I want focaccia, a caprese this morning.

We plan splitting our sandwiches in half with someone new, giggling and flustered.

I think she’s planning 911. Would men with guns actually tase me this morning?

She follows me in her Buick as I walk home. I know my love (at last! Can you believe it?),

movie buff, would gently rub my arm, laugh at this hiccup, watching Scorsese this morning.

Has she ever danced, clumsy and wine drunk, with anyone she’d be happy

to be happy with? Asked “Etta James, Cher, or Jay-Z this morning?”

Maybe she dreamt a robber had my face. Or I stole something else,

slow-dancing with her once-love in Italy—tongues spicy, Calabrese—this morning.

I reach my porch. She leaves. I want to chuck my phone at her back windshield,

make rings from the shattering glass. Beauty would amaze me this morning.

“Alexis, learn to let things go,” I whisper. Later, at home, I nibble on tomato

and basil. There’s a decadent sliver of sun. What more could faze me this morning?

Alexis Sears is the author of Out of Order, winner of the 2021 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and the Poetry by the Sea Book Award: Best Book of 2022. Her work appears in Best American Poetry, Poet Lore, Cortland Review, Cimarron Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her BA in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University. Sears lives in Los Angeles.