guppy
The lights in the pharmacy were spaceship bright. Her head hurt from a triangle glare off the Mucinex box. A man wore sweat pants and a turtleneck and stood half in dirty slippers in front of the toothpaste. He smelled like smoke and kitty litter, a thick cloud of old sweat and body odor. She held her nose and breathed through her mouth — more difficult than usual, considering the heavy anchor pressing against her chest and cinching her air.
She gasped and her neck cracked. Breath so violent, when had life become such an impossible obstacle? Every inhale stopped short just at her breastbone. It would not travel all the way to her navel, into her limbs. Her bones felt deprived, and she gasped like a guppy.
The man looked at her. He wiped his stubbled face with the side of his hand. The stubble scratched against his hand, and she heard it like sandpaper. She cringed and gasped again. He scowled, said, “Ehh,” and plucked at the elastic of his waistband.
She hated standing here in the sick aisle with the sick people and their weak sicknesses, like all the fibers in them stopped connecting, transmitters too feeble to transmit, and they shuffled through — infirm. She tapped at a Sudafed box. She should be able to control this herself, this struggle for air. Should open all airways through sheer will and blunt mental force.
Her neck stiffened, esophagus constricted. She yanked air again and felt… empty. Nothing.
The man scratched at his face again. Pulled a toothbrush from the display case, repeated, “Ehh.”
