Veronica Tucker

Yellow Light, Empty Lot

The parking lot hums
beneath its one surviving lamp,
a circle of dull gold
where moths orbit like forgotten planets.

The asphalt still remembers
shoes scuffing after closing time,
teenagers daring each other to leap
from one oil stain to the next.

Now only a stray cart rattles,
its bent wheel complaining to no one,
and the smell of last week’s rain
clings to the cracks.

The world waits here,
on the edge of being torn down,
as if the dark itself
were holding the walls upright,
daring them to last one more night.

Inheritance, in Dust

Inside the barn
where no one keeps animals anymore,
sunlight finds its way through
slats of wood gnawed soft by time.

The rafters cradle spiderwebs
thick as old lace.
Every nail speaks in rust,
every board hums with its own weather.

My hand brushes across
a workbench layered in sawdust,
where the ghost of a hammer lies
like a body in outline.

I breathe in the dust
and wonder what tools
outlast their makers,
what fragments pass for heirlooms
when the line has thinned.

Veronica Tucker is a writer, physician, and lifelong New Englander. Her poetry explores the intersections of medicine, motherhood, and the unseen spaces of ordinary life. Her work has appeared in One Art, The Berlin Review, and Eunoia Review, among others. When not writing or practicing emergency medicine and addiction medicine, she enjoys running, travel, time with her family, and finely crafted matcha lattes. She shares more of her work at www.veronicatuckerwrites.com and on Instagram @veronicatuckerwrites.

Artwork: “Wheel of Time” by Daniel Lurie

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