and he suspects it was a trap. Because he certainly didn’t leave that floaty wing behind himself, right on the edge of where the concrete patio ends and where the very clean pool begins. And now the pool is a lot less clean because Ted was carrying a tray of hamburgers. Ted does enjoy a good hamburger. But now both Ted and the hamburgers are becoming waterlogged and ruined. This is probably already on Twitter. Some cousin’s kid has gone and snapchattered it into the Internet and all of Congress will no doubt have seen it by Monday. Ted remembers when pool parties were fun. They didn’t used to be some sort of performance art. Ted knows he doesn’t have the biggest barbecue pit in the family, but it’s not like he hosts company very often. Ted’s sister almost didn’t let him have the 4th this year. Probably was his sister who left that floaty there. Ted’s white shirt sticks to him as he climbs out of the pool and takes off his shoes. He hates that wet feet feeling. Someone offers to help with the mess, but Ted insists on doing it on his own. He grabs a pool net from the shed and starts fishing burgers and buns out of the pool as if they were trout. A woman is laughing. He wonders how many likes this will get on Facebook. Wonders if he’d rather be liked or ignored. Piles pool burgers and their remaining detritus on the concrete with his ruined sneakers.

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet, Starbucks connoisseur, and glitter enthusiast living in Austin, Texas. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture (Anomalous Press), and Hysteria: Writing the female body (Sable Books, forthcoming). Kristin is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including A Guide for the Practical Abductee (Red Bird Chapbooks), Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press), and Behind, All You’ve Got (Semiperfect Press, forthcoming). Kristin is an assistant poetry editor at The Boiler and an editorial assistant at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked nights at The New Yorker. Find her online at EKristinAnderson.com and on twitter at @ek_anderson.