By Kayla Joy Friedland
Contributor
between the buzzing and beeping
and sweet potatoes rolling
beyond the carpet and to your feet
where you greet me with squiggly lines
for eyebrows that look like
your undercooked toddler
took a sharpie to your forehead
I try to look behind the empty eyes
of paying customers who are supposed to mean nothing
to me
but queen elizabeth on green plastic
and some canadian bird on a donation that could’ve been
you sigh and tell me you’ve already given
money to a cause that runs on a constant influx
of the public’s hard earned cash
you smile, I smile back
a papercut on my thumb as i hand you your ticket
out of the beeps and buzzing
and painfully
bright artificial constellations
and i wonder about you
and why you think one donation is enough
and if donations are a form of self gratification?
or if i’m just too generous,
or not generous at all,
maybe i’m pretentious
maybe i deserve a nobel prize
maybe i deserve less than 13.50 an hour
maybe the earth is dying and you spent
$1 on plastic bags,
or did you?
because i didn’t charge you
but you didn’t notice
you were too busy scraping your wallet of
a facade of
generosity
and the human condition that never fails to go stale