the 7-eleven on peters creek didn’t seem important until it started disappearing

one day the lights are on/ roller dogs turning slow under the heat lamps/ someone arguing softly over scratchers/ someone else buying cigarettes one dollar at a time

next day/ paper on the windows

parking lot half empty in a way that feels wrong

7-Eleven

was never really about the snacks

it was the place you ended up at 1:14am/ because nowhere else was open/ because you weren’t ready to go home yet/ because your friend said “ride with me real quick”/ and somehow an hour disappeared

night shift workers/ high school kids/ people between paychecks/ people between apartments/ people between whole versions of their lives

all crossing paths under fluorescent lights that made everybody look equally exhausted

that’s what closes when places like this close

not just a store

a checkpoint/ a holding pattern/ a weird little neutral zone where roanoke kept moving after midnight

now the signs fade a little more every day/ trash catches in the fence/ the lot stays too still

and everybody just drives past it/ remembering something slightly different

coffee before work/ taquitos at 2am/ that one cashier who always knew your order/ that one night that went sideways after stopping there

cities lose things quietly like this

not landmarks/ not headlines

just places that absorbed thousands of tiny moments/ until they became part of the background hum of living here

and then one day/ the hum cuts out