BREAKFAST INCLUDED Fluorescent overheads lean wicked against 6 a.m., Thursday, another day as August ages into what it’s owed, one more hot spell before the leaves turn. Sun a yolk in white fog, orange sulfur lamps still humming over the I-89 interchange and the Comfort Inn breakfast room where a too-young grandmother to four girls is letting mama have her shower in peace and quiet, and put that down young lady the baby swatting a plastic spoon into pink Froot-Looped milk. It’s all supposed to be a treat, even the cook-your-own waffles poured from plastic cups into the automatic iron, chirping messily. Like the cooler with plastic pots of peach yogurt, blank eyeballs of peeled eggs, factory farming even here where the fields roll rustic into avocado green and harvest gold. A state trooper with the uncanny profile of your absent lover drips three more creamers into Styrofoam. Later, he’ll pull you over, won’t remember how you stared blankly at the closed-captioned TV, tearful over Lebanon, how you stirred and stirred cup after cup until you just had to leave. How your shaking hands hovered over a brown Formica table where you misplaced a chip of eggshell, he couldn’t know how you ached after a night that was, after all, also only a fragment, the whole road between then and now too long to keep driving this fast. How you now know that even sweet time disintegrates, Coffee Mate into a dark cup, enlightenment without substance. How children leave crumbs behind, and you, weeping with a crumpled napkin, sweeping up. STILL HUNGRY As always in September I wake in sloping peach-yellow mornings and remember there have been too few peaches this summer know that as many furred skins as have prickled my lips, as many slick crevices as have fallen beneath your teeth, there have never been enough. The sun lowering like overripe fruit is only a reminder, and so is the moon grown pregnant and gold, and the baskets of pumpkins where once were peaches just moments ago. As always in September— and yet the days lean into winter and far away I know I’ll wish for jam but I spent the season lingering in your arms, feeding you peaches, sure (then) that winter would feel as warm.