after Destiny O. Birdsong
By SIANI AMMONS
it’s a nameless Thursday & i feel my footsteps
before they sound on the ground
the air is foggy-gray & i hear laughter escape from the white elderly couple in tweed,
still in-love, emerging hand-in-hand from the magic of Studio Theater 1
i’ve been trudging along with every shy-breath
the kind that weighs me down the most,
makes me the saddest, because it seems endless this constant hard carry of the body through heavy air & even when i get inside, even after i’ve settled into my bones enough to whisper
a bright “hi” to the ticket seller, i’m still distant
like a photo escaping from sound
like whispers reverberating against silence
i’m mumbling to the ticket seller ‘bout golden popcorn with extra extra butter, finding
a light in the silent memories of childhood summers spent at my local AMC
chasing after friends across harshly patterned carpeted floors with a grin
my mother chaperoning my friends i & our joy.
now, i’m thinking ‘bout all of the hands i won’t hold as i cross this movie theater altar
how i won’t have to silently hide my urges to mix cookie dough with
nutritional yeasted cheddar seasoned dusted popcorn my eyes wide open mouth shut
hands clammy with the sweet sweat that only desire can muster i am thinking of all
the people-watching i can do in my chair, that throne of polyester, by the coffee & decaf
machines, overlooking the windows, those windows that keep me enclosed, sucking
on my own buttery fingertips awkwardly wondering how people can bear the
useless chattering & smacking & chewing of another at this liberal small town cinema why would i want someone
to distract me from a screen?
from all that is good & fake & faraway instead
instead just let me sit here, outside, watch the people leave & come in & leave & come in
watch the fog
condense on that elderly couple’s lips
before they lean in for a chocolate-butter coated kiss. they bruised, they wrinkled, they screen
meeting window, life meeting fantasy.
why has no one loved me in that way? till death do us part till Letterboxd reviews differ till our hands are blue-veined visible & our pants thoroughly soaked with butter juices dripping from a thin paper bag till our hands know their places residing in one another in front of a heavily stylized popcorn bag so old that it is new breathless like the laugh escaping from their necks their dripping necks bowing together for a kiss in an Amherst Cinema parking lot for everyone for me in that chair in my throne to watch.
Writer | Siani Ammons ’27 | sammons27@amherst.edu
Editor | Mel Arthur ’25 | marthur25@amherst.edu