I Bought Gum I Didn't Want

couldn't sleep, didn't want to lie there losing to it, so i drove. nowhere open at 2am out here except the gas station mart with the lights that buzz like they're annoyed to still be on. i didn't need anything. i walked every aisle anyway, slow, like a museum nobody curated — the wall of chips, the lonely rotisserie hot dogs turning under a heat lamp for no one, the fridge of energy drinks glowing like a little church.

there's one guy working. he didn't look up. why would he. we're the only two people awake for what feels like the whole zip code, him behind the counter and me pretending to consider beef jerky, and neither of us is going to acknowledge that this is what we're both doing with our one life at this hour.

i bought a pack of gum i won't chew, because you can't just walk the aisles and leave, there's a contract. he scanned it, said have a good one without meaning the words, and the receipt was longer than the gum.

out in the lot i sat in the car and the store glowed behind me, this one bright box of awake in a town that had given up for the night, and i thought: somebody's got to be the lights. somebody's got to leave a place open in case a person can't sleep and needs to stand somewhere that isn't their own dark. tonight that was him. i just came to stand in it.