Taking Tickets

I’m the ticket taker. I rip the ticket and hand half back. I’m always halving all these full, clean tickets, split them down the middle and hand half back. Go right on in. Enjoy the show. When the line gets long, I tell them to have their tickets ready. They say all kinds of things to me: I adore you, and I hand half back. I’m worried about you, and I hand half back. Let’s get a place together and have cats and coffee in the morning, and I hand half of that, even that, back. The line’s getting longer, so I have to be brief. My pockets fill with ticket halves, reminders of who I’d let in and told to enjoy the show.









Olivia Olson is a librarian working in metro Detroit, MI. Some of her recent poems can be found in Driftwood Press and Spry Literary Journal. She is also the editor of SiDEKiCK, a literary journal which aims to publish underrepresented voices in poetry.

See another poem by Olson in Issue 3.1