There were nutty buddy’s and pay days and individual boxes of fruit loops. A large vat of dirt-water coffee, sad bananas and droopy pears. She twisted the three dollar bills around her fingers. Kit Kat’s and snickers. Bubble gum and spearmint Altoids. Her lunch break would be over in fifteen minutes, she would have ten minutes to eat if she picked something right then. But maybe she needed to go to Wendy’s, she had another $1.50 in her car for the 4 for $4. There was also the McDonalds on roadway, that was only six minutes away. Hot dogs, hot pretzels, nachos, eggs. Honey roasted peanuts, salted peanuts, spicy chilly peanuts. She grabbed a muffin and a limp banana and pushed them onto the counter. “Would you like to donate ten cents to The children’s cancer foundation?” the cashier asked, scooping two quarters from the register. “Actually, I want to return those. Can I have my money back?” “I’m sorry, we have a no return policy on items under five dollars,” he said, handing her the fifty cents. “Enjoy your day!” She dumped the muffin wrapper in the trash on the way out and took a bite. It suctioned to the roof of her mouth and she threw the rest in the trash can next to her car. “You find what you wanted?” Maria asked, her head sticking out of the window of her car. “Not yet,” she responded. “You can head back. I’ll be there in a second.” And with that, she shut the door of her car, typed Niagara Falls into her GPS, and turned towards the interstate heading north towards Canada.
As the road ahead of her grew less and less familiar, she began to taste exactly what she wanted.
My breath materializes in front of me, a genie’s smoke spilling out of my mouth, and it asks, ‘what do you want?’
Across the street, a snowman’s shadow lies limp on the grass. Its carrot has slipped low on his face, the body slouched as if it is grieving.
‘What do you want?’ my breath asks again, the white billows looming over my face.
My hands are frozen, my nose is frozen, my toes are numb stumps on the end of my feet.
‘When will I become somebody?’ my brain asks the snowman as the white air falls across my eyes. The snow man’s tiny stone eyes stare at me, unblinking, watching the oscillation of my breath, before its head rolls back across its back and splits in half on the grass.
In the mirror, my body flows in and out of itself, big and small, tall and short, my hips narrow and widen, as my brain sorts through who I am supposed to be. I want to be grounded, connect to the earth, bring my feet into the grass and latch softly, but firmly. But when I think of myself in nature it is about the knobby fingers and the slender body of an aspen tree, drifting up and up into the clouds or the ink of night.
