Remembering the Sabbath

When I get those Sunday scaries, those Sunday
scaries spreading dread like carbon monoxide,
low barometric pressure of the soul, and I want,

when I get those Sunday scaries, to avoid
a thousand dollars’ worth of coral activewear,
consuming an entire French silk pie,

plucking bald brows, texting exes, hacking
hipster bangs, innovating new martini recipes,
to avoid Sunday scaries, I land on Google

Street View, seeking a glimmer, shimmer, trigger;
ghostly gasping greeting from the past places left
unattended: the bookshop I clerked at post-divorce,

the condo where lightning struck like a bomb,
that gym where I worked off the frozen custard
from that sweet stand with the peaked roof:

current constituents suffering, suppressing Sunday
scaries of their own: recreating, populating, tearing down,
clearing out, shoring up, like bellows reanimating, picking

up where I left off, until one scary Sunday in the future,
I will Google my current abandoned past present here,

in anticipation of anticipating
the anticipation of nostalgia,
remembering the Sabbath,
keeping it holy.

Julie Benesh has published stories, poems, and essays in Tin House, Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, Hobart, JMWW, Cleaver, and many other places. She is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College in Creative Writing and the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Grant. Read more at juliebenesh.com.