Connective Cube

Tea. Fizzy water. Another day of coffee, pulpy orange juice and nibbles of chocolate. And that bottle, another new one with good ole H2O.

The recycling now whittles down to cans of grapefruit soda water. Beer, he calls it. He can down six of them as quickly as the high gravity beer of the moment. It is still easy to do on the sofa, the one that provides a momentary relief from the full effects of gravity. Strangely, it made her back hurt more than walking, sitting on the couch night after night.

Sugar cravings explode. Time to go to the store, a reason to get off the couch.

This time, Liz spots five different types of chocolate items at the store. Chocolate granola bars with peanut butter, moose tracks ice cream, milk duds, chocolate milk syrup and a bar of Swiss chocolate. Liz pulls her cart close to her hips, observing the items scattered among plain yogurt, almonds, spring mix tea with a flower pattern, spinach, mcintosh apples, lemons, goat cheese crumbles and frozen mushroom pizza.

Time for some items to go back to their shelves. their appropriate shelves, justifying an increase in her step count. From the front of the store, and to the of the line spilling into the baby diapers, took 27 steps.

Around the end cap, to the right three aisles and to the right in the cereal aisle. Granola bars tend to stay on the top shelf for months, ready for her when she takes quitting chocolate seriously. 45 steps.

The ice cream is already out of the freezer. It stays. It is rude to give someone freezer burn.

29 steps to the milk duds and puts them back.

Wouldn’t chocolate go great in Kahlua? Melted chocolate with coconut rum and Kahlua? That could be the ultimate milkshake. Welp, chocolate milk it is.

39 steps back to the line. She averts her eyes, gazing at the sunburst logo on the spinach package. The new cinching on her jeans pinch her lower right hip. It is also that stupid time of the month.

Tampons. around the corner, around the left bend. 22 steps. More flower bursts.

Back around 22 steps. No one else got in line, for once. Liz stares at her phone, and let’s Rob know that she got the pizza. That’s the plan tonight. Mushroom pizza and bed. And fizzy water.

The imperative to source Tesla’s and Ferrari’s makes me want to go to the marble palace and listen to the echoes of my own wretching.

The CEO is now gone, and has been for two weeks. His words, ‘we are in the business of hiring Tesla’s, and Ferrari’s, and Porsche’s. We also need some solid and reliable Honda’s’ churn through my brain pathways every time I review another portfolio, another resume, another copywriter or designer who needs some way to pay bills for their artistic training.

Today, I breeze past the front-desk attendant while she settled someone in the clinical red room, the color of clean blood. My schedule would allow for some blotches on my face, at least for two hours. Some people can cry, and look like they briefly have glassy, yet dewy eyes.

I am not so lucky. I have learned to hold my tears, to breathe deeply, and to create a casing of resting bitch face in spaces of high stakes commerce. In the bathroom, I can crumble, for a few, knowing that no one looks for me. For now, I can tuck my knees into my protruding belly, put my head between my knees, and feel the hot tears saturate my leggings and release audible sobs.

This creates less blotches on my face. The blotches, more of a mosaic of various saturations of all the warm colors, could yield hundreds of hex codes with the eyedropper tool in Photoshop.

The crumbling stops when someone starts punching in the key code. There is enough time to stand from my squat and sit on the toilet seat, usually with my underwear up.

For all she knows, I am taking a long shit.

I wait. Pull some toilet paper from the dispenser, taking my time. In the women’s bathroom, many people hold their poop, I think, when others are in the bathroom. In all my crying jags, people are in, then out of the stall.

The waiting for the mirror check takes the longest. In such a building, the bathrooms have separate mirror areas, ideal for losing five minutes to perfect lip gloss, or pin hair 10 different ways.

When the door clicks shut, I make my escape, washing my hands. I take a paper towel, wet it, and absorb the smell of pulp as I cool my face. The blotch level is a six, the same as a contained yet noticeable splash with a cannonball at the deep end of a swimming pool.

Luckily, I can skate back to my desk, quietly. I am on the outer edge, and I only have to walk past the front-desk attendant, who barely says hello to me. She looks up to my boss, who brags about drinking three $30 glasses of wine and worships the the Kardashians, the Hiltons. They want their own reality show together, and I can’t understand how someone who reads Margaret Atwood worships the equivalent of Ayn Rand, or Anne Coulter.

Or maybe I have always been too wary of tall, thin blonde people with disposable income and who express unironic eagerness to dress as Regina George from Mean Girls for Halloween.

None of them can see me cry.

Oil lips with the tips of taste buds
Liquids clashing
Just her own tone
Of sticky rose fuchsia colliding
With my slimy mushy banana texture
Mint flavor mouth

How do I get lipstick off my face? When did I last wash my cheeks with something besides shampoo trickling down my face?

Quit overthinking. Kiss, make up a beat, her mouth is slimy fruit mouth too. No one wants to walk a plank right now.

An upright stiff will only fall like a feather from a pillow on the edge of a coffee table.

Laughing & Crying – Jana Hunter

The cityscape, with rolling hills of

houses with grey tongues
licking with humid hue.

Does ole silver map the ground beneath?
Not now, power down.

Chair up, armrest down
I forgot to call.

Broccoli below
Where did I show my shell?

Did I leave it far below
on another latitude?

It turns out the other way around.

The turquoise drought
Sticky sweat requires showers

My toes, rough with slough
at least can flip flop around

Hit the ground,
power on

Head north on the train
except 1/1000 of the distance