Jasmine won’t stop speaking in a British accent, the vowels extended and muffled like chewing gum. As we climb around Walmart’s posh blue belly, grabbing at lotion on shelves and running our hands across bedazzled clothing, she stays ahead of me. This is one of her favorite pastimes, Jasmine says. Melting away in supermarkets. It’s like a game, peaking around aisles after midnight, buying for the sake of buying. Especially in the summer, supermarkets have an ethereal way about them. An air conditioned liminal space. A playground for the sleepless. We sit across from each other in an aisle full of toys.

Myself: So, who are you?

Jasmine: (checking her phone) I’m twenty. I’m from Texas. I’m a nobody poet. I’m a couple of neurons.

Myself: What do you want to do with your life?

Jasmine: In my freshman year of college, we had to make a tiny documentary for class. When I showed my TA my video, she cried. I want that. I want it all the time.

Myself: What was the video about?

Jasmine: (crossing and uncrossing her legs like a sick grasshopper) Violence.

Myself: What does it feel like when you write?

Jasmine: Most of the time, it feels like nothing. Like dead air. Like, I blink and the poem is there. Sometimes it feels like purging. There’s a heave. It depends on my mood.

Myself: What do you like to write about?

Jasmine: (grabbing a ball off the shelf) There’s been a great shift in my work from writing from the world of being a teenager to more recently. I feel like I’ve left that world behind and now I’m an alien on a weird, sad planet. I’m still exploring what I like. I love writing with bravado, putting on airs and seeing where the confidence takes me.

Myself: Do you have a lot of confidence aside from writing?

Jasmine: (bouncing the ball) I know I’m something different. I can feel that and I’m okay with it. I used to hate my weirdness but now it’s my crown, I take it everywhere with me.

By now, the store is thinning out. We haven’t seen another person for fifteen minutes. We get up and graze to the fruit section. Apples beaming, oranges wearing fishnets. The heavy scent of life. Jasmine plucks a green juice from the shelf and we head over to the self check-out. It is just us and an employee, sleepy and silent. He watches us pay for the juice, he watches us leave. We stand in the parched parking lot for a few moments. There are five stars in the sky, shy and white. Jasmine thinks of a joke and twists her mouth into a laugh.

She doesn’t tell me what’s so funny.

– Jasmine Ledesma