LEAH MUELLER

WEINER NIRVANA

The hot dog stand
on the corner
of Belmont and Clark

was my pit stop
after a long night of
playing Space Invaders
in the summer of 1979.

Every employee
was a drag queen.

They sauntered over
to the counter
in sky-high heels,
ketchup oozing onto
their chipped fingernails.

None of them had gotten
the no-ketchup memo that
Chicago was famous for.

The drag queens always
tucked my crumpled bill
into a damp corner
of their brassieres
and told me to
enjoy my meal.

At 3:00 AM,
it all tasted good:
the pickles’ vinegar tang,
the crushed and soggy onions,
the cheap, stale buns.

You can digest anything
at 19. Those hot dogs
slid through my intestines
and settled right in,
as if they belonged there.

The sun rolled over
and caught a couple
more hours of rest,
as I staggered home,

neon-lit, exhausted,
having spent my last dollar
on yet another basket
of cheap sustenance.

ACME, WASHINGTON

As I slow my vehicle to 35
inside the Acme city limits,
I spot a man, dressed in
an orange construction vest,
propped beside the upstairs window
of an abandoned two-story farmhouse.

Plastic face expressionless,
he guards his mildewed home:
both vacant eyes cast downward
towards Highway 9,
like he wants to catch it
in the middle of something.

A few years later,
the man gives up his vigil
without explanation.
Perhaps he tumbles backwards

or is snatched by a clever gang
of vandals. The house stages
a deliberate collapse, surrendering
one rotted beam after another.

When the joists give way,
the structure caves on one side
but attempts to hold the
other aloft, as if to salvage
triumph from its failure.

Each day, the sodden walls
sink lower. Each night, the floor
draws closer to earth.
Cars roar past without comment.
Acme’s citizens don’t even
remember their neighbor.

The man was always a loner.
Never had folks over.
Just stood at that window, staring
like he had something to protect.

RATTLESNAKE HIGHWAY

The rattlesnake highway
led me away from you.
128 miles through Nevada
on 93, due north.

No cell reception. No
gas stations. No
structures of any kind.

I didn’t service the car
before I left Arizona.

Just barreled the damn thing
though the wasteland,
taking my chances,
like I always do.

Maybe you were meant
for the white-hot sun
to calcify you
into indifference.

FORGET EVERYTHING YOU KNOW

Each day, we begin
with a little more clutter.
We forget where we put
our gloves. We forget
our own phone numbers.
We forget to purchase mayonnaise

at the supermarket. We forget
the names of our first crush,
our nieces and nephews,
our next-door neighbor, and
our favorite yoga instructor.
We forget mid-sentence

why we started to speak
in the first place.
We grasp for syllables:
“You know, that THING.”

We can’t recall the
Thing’s actual name, so
we draw its shape in the air
with frantic hands, trying
to retrieve a simple word
like “mailbox” or “oven.”

Three or four thousand days
can do serious damage
in increments. Each moment,
more gray matter leaks

from its sandbag, leaving
an uneven trail that no
breadcrumbs can ever mark.
The path leads back to itself.

Leah Mueller‘s work appears in Rattle, Best Small Fictions, Certain Age, Writers Resist, The Shallot, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, New Flash Fiction Review, Does It Have Pockets, Outlook Springs, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has received several nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Her fifteenth book, “Porcelain and Vinyl” was published by Rust Belt Press in 2026. Check out more of her work at substack.com/@leahsnapdragon.