Vacation means

12 hours in a park we know by heart.

One churro, one hot pretzel,

one Mint Julep sweating through a paper cup.

The first night of vacation means

convenience store pizza on Fifth Avenue,

means

the man behind the counter with wax-white skin

and eyes filmed over like a butterfly wing.

“I can’t wait to get out of here, escape the grind,” he says,

the way he always does.

Katherine Matuszak is a fiction writer living in the Bay Area. She writes full-time for PartyCity.com, and is a regular contributor to 65/57 Degrees, a local lifestyle magazine. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from CSU East Bay, and her short fiction and poetry has appeared in blink-ink, Foliate Oak, and Her Heart Poetry magazines. When she isn’t working on her novel-in-progress, she’s playing roller derby with the Undead Bettys. Connect with her on Twitter: @kmatuszakwrites