excercise no. 3

it's fast work in there. there is a line up of too many people that are all in separate important rushes, clutching drinks that sweat ice water over their knuckles, or, depending on what time of day it was, leak scalding sugary drops over their thumbs while they count their cash. the walls are lined with fridges now, cold on the inside but humming electricity and heat into the store. the heat, the coloured lights and the music blaring are caffeinated enough for me. standing on a pivot, turning from customer to cash register, blurting thank-yous and have-a-nice-days without thinking and trying to get through the line in the ten minute rush that occurs every hour, i always get dizzy from moving too fast and forgetting to look at people's faces. today i made seven sixty three in tip money.

re-gifting

horizontal with someone whose smell is still new, her legs tangled and stretched out on flannel bedding. mindlessness, the absence of any residual anger and her mind blissfully blank. except for the ever clenching and unclenching gears that are asking: how long should it take to get over this? six weeks, four months, maybe eight? it should take forever, though. some of those things she said, saying them meant this should take forever to get over.
do people get over it? she thinks that people just need to pretend to get over it before they actually can. once they fall into the pattern of pretending that their eyes are focused and they had a full night’s sleep and that sixteen cookies constitutes a well-balanced meal and not a symptom of depression, everything settles into a rhythm of normal. she would assume. maybe her actions were that of someone who is ‘moving on,’ but nothing felt normal.
the possibility still seems ludicrous. less ludicrous now that someone was above her, putting pressure on her stomach, the buttons on his wool sweater pushing into her abdomen.