CONVENIENCE STORE PRAYER — ELIZABETH HART BERGSTROM
/Come in, all you chain smokers and compulsive gamblers, all you bulimics and alcoholics. Let me lead you into temptation. From my bleach-baptized aisles I bring unto you Mega Millions lotto tickets, 73 configurations of chocolate and caramel and nougat folded into crinkling wrappers, 24-ounce cans of malt liquor, low-tar Camel Lights and full-flavor Marlboro Reds, and Cheetos to stain your fingers with their sticky orange pollen. I bring you Powerball drawn every Wednesday and Saturday night at 10:59 p.m. Eastern. I bring you 18-packs of Budweiser and liters of budget Merlot and boxes of laxative pills hermetically sealed into blister packs. I bring you cherry snack pies and chewing tobacco. I bring you the churn of the slushie machine, the smell of hot coffee, and the tolling of mechanical bells.
I bring unto you everything you could possibly need in your quest to become nothing. Some will fight against this path, with their twelve steps or their Nicorette gum or their gods. But you will come back to me one day, for this is your true temple. Glazed, jelly-filled, pink-frosted with rainbow sprinkles.
And lo, my neon lamps will burn as bright as rubies. They will burn 24/7/365. I am the refuge of all exiles, welcoming you with doors that swing open at your touch. Come to me, world-weary, storm-tossed, empty and alone. Inside my walls, there is no weather, no time. Trade your coins for my Scratch and Win cards and sleek cigarettes. Bring me your shame, your failure, your relapse, and let me feed them until they grow strong. Kneel down on the tile floor that is identical to tens of thousands of others. Reach your trembling hand into my shelves and you will find it: here, only here, you will find what you need.
Elizabeth Hart Bergstrom's work appears or is forthcoming in The New York Times, Post Road, Catapult, The Offing, Fourteen Hills, Hobart, Hippocampus, and elsewhere. She's a queer, disabled writer who lives in Vermont.
