Spinning Out in the Produce Section

BY: MAGGIE MAURO

You pretend to like people who don’t look at you long enough to notice the small things. That’s why the man across the produce section at the grocery store is so appealing to you. He’s broad in the shoulders and blank in the face, eyes and nose and lips that won’t embed themselves into your psyche. A rough jaw and a strong brow. He’s attractive in the way that so many other men are.

When your gaze tangles with his, you see how the rest of your night will go. He will approach you, heat swollen in his cheeks. His brown eyes will drip with earnest as he strikes up a conversation. It will be as stiff as the joints of a cadaver, the conversation, but you will both understand his true intent. Not long after, you will be arching into one another in the back of your Honda Accord. Your lips will mash into his like the fruit of plums, juicing one another for pleasure. He will lace your f ingers together. Breath will slash through your lungs. Your lids will fall shut and he will swallow your voice like it’s spun sugar.

Afterward, silence will stretch between you and the faceless man for a good ten minutes. He’ll cough, just to make noise, and ask to type his number in your phone. It will be lost among your hundreds of contacts, collecting dust alongside the names of your high school best friends and the therapist you ghosted last year. He’ll smile crookedly, sheepishly.

But you will hardly be able to bear the weight of all he doesn’t know, all he’ll never know. He won’t know that the scar on your arm came from a misstep on the playground when you were thirteen and too old to chase the careless joys of childhood. He won’t know that the spatter of freckles on your shoulder reminds you of the Pleiades, that you search for constellations in all of your body’s markings, if only to feel like something about your appearance is intentional. He won’t know that you haven’t spoken to your mother in months. That you’re terrified of growing older and having nothing to show for it. That, most days, you feel too small for your own skin.

You will imagine these echoes of yourself as little glass balls, shattered beneath the heel of his hiking boot. You will envision yourself picking them up, these shards of your vulnerability, only for their edges to bite into your palms. Foolish. It would be foolish to expect him to want more from you than what you’ve already given. You will convince yourself that you’re a memory meant to be forgotten.

You will pretend that the ache of his unfamiliarity does not burn heavy in your bones, that you don’t need to tear the ribs from your sternum just to give your heart enough space to beat. Small truths will spill onto your tongue, simmering, yearning to be heard by someone. By anyone. You’ll push them back down your throat, even if it means you can’t breathe. The sight of him in your car will suddenly overwhelm you, and you’ll vomit up a hasty goodbye instead. You’ll promise to call him. You never will. He’ll walk away, dissolving into the pale harshness of the parking lot lights, and you will wonder when you’ll finally stop fighting and let yourself be seen.

You come back to the produce section, hand frozen on the rind of an orange. You’ve been staring at the faceless man. He’s noticed, and he moves to approach you. Your pulse thuds hot in your skull. Your eyes boil in their sockets. You turn on your heel and walk away.