The woman who walked by me in the packaged meats aisle at Target smelled of something rotten.
I didn't know what to make of it. She didn't bump into me, but still I said "sorry I'm so sorry" and she turned her awful misshapen back around and looked at me like I'd come at her with a cleaver.
I'll never get over my first love, or the first time someone scolded me for doing something truly wrong
(I was in preschool, with a tendency to argue)
And I'll have a hard time forgetting the first time I tried to wish away my face when the wind was far too cold, because of course it's easier to have not than to have,
I'll imagine the flashes of certain photographs taken
and smells of meals I might eat were I able to
stomach the sheer density
of meat that day
(sorry I'm so so sorry)
Looked at me
looked at me like I was rotten.