Reassurances at 3am

Askold Skalsky

*Wawa, Inc. is a chain of convenience stores and gas stations located along the East Coast of the United States

This lighted Wawa* in the night,

an apparition out of the street’s dark pitch,

calms me with its steel-cemented soul

and the neatly-combed laddie

behind the register and its plastic playground

of bright wrappers and outrageous kitsch.

He is whole

and capable of conquering all doubt and fear,

here in night’s lonely phantomry,

a lighted circle of a come-down stratosphere

with its unholy luminosity and dizzying slate

of outward differential differences

invading the vacant corridors

of sleep’s estate.