"Mobius" by Taylor Supplee

Taylor Supplee

Taylor Supplee

Taylor Supplee is an undergraduate at Missouri State University where he serves as an associate editor for Moon City Review. His poetry is forthcoming in Rattle and SLAB, and has appeared in Midwestern Gothic, Paddle Shots: A River Pretty Anthology, The Missing Slate, Revolver, and Shadow Road Quarterly.

Mobius

I met a faceless man from 2092 at a funeral. His truck a familiar make, the cigarette he offered,
that I already smoked. Sorry, we dragged from gravel throats like crows, flicked ash into the
grave and shared a drink, shaking dirt from our hair, our tired eyes blunting the mirrored shelves
behind the bar, the warped reflections. The man’s sharp face cracked the glass at anomalous
angles, sharp like maybe his mother’s giving birth in the pale morning. I was a quiet baby, hair
like fire in the photo the stranger unfolded from his wallet, swaddled in his arms, our mother’s
around his. The sun’s glare refracted the highway’s black surface, shoulders creased at the spine,
gravity pulling both ways, and shadows drove in opposite ways on the Mobius road. My first and
last lullaby, the hush of tires over wet pavement leading back to where a man shares a drink with
himself, missing his mother, fills in her grave and then his own.