Sheila pulled carrots and celery out of the fridge. In the pantry, she swiped three red potatoes from the shelf, plus an onion. Wait, was that supposed to have been in the fridge this whole time? Whatever. The recipe called for bell pepper too, but she wasn’t a fan. At least, not of the green ones. Running a finger down the page—thank messes for plastic sheet-covers—she had everything she needed.
Except for a third of the spices. And the half and half. Well, she could use milk, even if the broth would be thinner. And she could still pull off some flavor, experimenting with whatever was on her shelf. Cooking was a lot like life, she thought. Everything got thrown into the pot, and you made it work—one way or another.
I opted to work until 5:30 that Wednesday. Out of my immediate coworkers, I’m the one with the most arbitrary schedule—or so it must seem, to my superiors. If I had a rhyme or reason to how I sorted my hours and shifts—well, I have those, but they wouldn’t want to listen. I don’t want to tell them either. Because they might start thinking—well, it’s best not to have your elders think too highly of you. Or think of you at all, if you can help it.
Anyway, yeah—I clocked out half past the hour. The evening light was holding up. This time of year, you can tell the days are getting shorter, but it’s a toss-up of when the sun will start to sour. That probably makes it sound like I was in a bad mood. I wasn’t. It was nice to be out of the office after having put in a good effort. The evening was warm, because it was also that time of year when the warmest part of the day came between four-thirty and seven-thirty. I walked to my car, slow because it often feels like I’m in danger of falling and because the breeze was nice.
I resisted the impulse to stop on the train tracks. To turn and stare down that narrow trail to the horizon’s final infinity. To see if I could feel the tines tremble beneath my feet a split second before the whistle reached my ears. How loud would the bells be, as the gate arms lowered? I imagine myself scurrying—not underneath the arm to safety, but across the gravel and scree. Not on the tracks, but close enough for the dust to stick to my lungs as the cars passed. The rumble giving strength to my bones, my heart matching each thud and clank. A tide of invisible thumbprints smoothing across my skin, a hum against my lips and inside my soul. You’ll get through this. You’re still going. Onward, my dear child! Raise your crown.
I’ve yet to figure out the train schedule, but I know they come early, and mid-morning, and at lunch time, and sometimes when we leave. Sometimes I think I should figure out the schedule, but other times I rather like not knowing. Because there is magic in it, you know. The messages the trains bring me, I can’t predict them. And I don’t know when I need them, but the tracks do. So I linger, always pausing. To listen, even to the silence. To be present.
But I stepped over them at last, a lingering ache in me. We would meet again—soon. The magic comes back as I take the highway. Another river of peace, and I merge into the current of traffic with ease. It’s not a long drive. I used to think I needed longer to decompress, but a short drive is better for the mornings. I’m shit in the mornings, if I have to leave the house.
I pull into the parking lot at 6:10. The reason I know that is because I got a text at 6pm, saying that my grocery order had been delayed. I didn’t see it until I was already in one of the pick-up spots. They said they would text me an update when it was ready. I thought about going home—which was only 5 minutes away—but there was always the chance that, as soon as I got there, they would text me and I would have to come right back. I didn’t have many evening plans. I rarely do. So I could wait.
Of course the milk had been bad. And, she probably could have risked pouting a little sour milk in the soup. Auntie G always said it was pretty much the same as buttermilk, anyway, but Sheila didn’t want to take her chances. Auntie G was just as likely to come up with a recipe for rusted nails as bad milk. She could have used water, but she wasn’t fond of soups with thin broth. Besides, she didn’t have one of those cube things to add flavor, or any vegetable stock. And since she was probably going to end up baking this weekend anyway, it didn’t hurt to pick up some butter and extra eggs.
Sheila slipped her arm through the basket handles and started through the aisles. The lights stuttered every once and a while, signaling someone had just gotten in a check-out line. Sheila aimed for the refrigerated section first, grabbing a gallon of milk this time instead of the half that she normally got.
“You should get the half.”
The face appeared on the other side of the glass, blurred by fingerprints and the condensation recently collected on the door.
“But I’m making soups,” she told the face. “Milk makes it taste better.”
The face bunched int a frown, and she saw the hoop pierced through the left jaw. It wasn’t a big hoop—maybe the size of a penny—but it was as thick around as a septum ring. Sheila smiled and waved.
“I thought that was you, Ernie—hard to tell with the fog and all. How’s your night going?”
“The shelves are staying in place and the inventory isn’t shouting at me, so I guess there’s not too much to complain about. Are you making those soups from scratch, or the condensed kind?”
“I usually do condensed, but I’m trying to expand my horizons. Like, get from beginners to maybe a medium-level sort of cooking. Something worth inviting people over for, yknow?”
“Are you asking me to dinner?”
“It’s a good insurance policy.” Sheila smirked. “If you give me bad advice, you’ll have to eat it.”
“Get the half-gallon like you usually do,” Ernie said again. “But get a quart of half and half, too. Use it instead of the milk. The taste is richer.”
“I kept wondering what the secret was. Something about using milk, I still felt like the taste was—not bland, maybe, but—”
“Flat?”
“Yeah—flat—that’s a good way to put it.”
“Cream gives it a rounder taste. Try the half and half first, and if you still think it needs something more, try using heavy whipping cream next time.”
“You serious?”
“It’s all about the richness.”
“Thanks, Ernie. I should let you go before the penguins get too warm—but will I see you for dinner?”
The piercing wiggled as Ernie laughed. It echoed on the cold air, carrying one way down to the whipped cream and the flavored creamers and the other way to the not-milk milks. Sheila slipped him a wink and took his advice. She went for the eggs and then to the spice aisle.
The lights flickered almost every ten or twenty seconds now. The whole neighborhood had forgotten something for dinner, it seemed. She could dawdle away half an hour, if it meant she wouldn’t wait as long in line. Just because Ernie was coming over for dinner, she didn’t have to have it ready right when he knocked on the door. And, since he clearly knew what he was talking about, maybe it was better to wait for direct instructions than try to rely on paraphrased memory.
You have to cook good, to keep a man. Auntie G was just as fond of saying that a man who couldn’t take her out to a five-star restaurant whenever she liked wasn’t worth her time. Sheila liked to cook, and she liked going out—but men weren’t required for that.
Parking lots are the most dangerous of places. I’m convinced. Whether you’re driving, sitting in your car, walking through a crosswalk, returning your cart—parking lots are a minefield. Absolute chaos. Playing from a loudspeaker near the building is the store’s radio, a strange soundtrack as I watch the sun melt. Usually I would listen to my own music, but my phone is half-dead.
I’m better off cracking the windows and turning off the car. I wouldn’t burn through a tank of gas, with this thing being a hybrid. Even with my foot on the brake and knowing the car is in park, I would panic that I would start tolling backwards or something. It’s not even a manual. I just get paranoid—because anything can happen in a parking lot. My mind wanders, aimlessly nudged along by hits from the seventies and eighties. Thinking about how time changes things, but the times don’t.
A fat man with a massive beard leans on the handle of a shopping cart. The baby in the seat, wide-eyed in a bright-pink windbreaker, reaches to tug at his nose. I smile to myself, thinking there are still good things in the world. The man is making goofy faces and the baby waves their arms, trying to grab at his beard.
A horn blares, startling the baby to tears. The fat man pokes the baby’s cheek, and the baby reaches for him. He kisses the baby’s palms and fingers but doesn’t pick the baby up. By the time they get to the automatic doors, the baby is smiling again and a screen of rain slides down from the sky.
I glance down at my phone and turn on my data, then hunt through my email. I never keep my email updated to my phone, because who would want that many notifications? But I check, and see the same update that I got in the text.
We’re extra busy, your time is valuable, we’ll text when your order is ready…
I check the app too. The order status says “delayed”. It’s almost a quarter to seven, and the watery sun is still shining. You always think sunshine and rain are opposites, but I’ve learned that the weather doesn’t know anything about rules. Or maybe we don’t know much about how the world works, despite our satellites and weather apps. All our predictions and projections, but some things, you just don’t see coming.
With the rain casting blue-grey light, the front doors of the store are white squares. I guess all the glass should look like eyes, but I think they look like teeth. Chomping away as each new shopper gets in line. There’s a thin scream as the automatic doors roll open and closed. Beneath the rain-patter and the clatter of shopping carts and the store radio, it’s nearly invisible. I know you think that’s impossible, for a sound to be invisible, but what do any of us know about the world?
A shadow appears in my side mirror. I scrunch my shoulder away from the door, as if it would keep whatever it is from colliding with me. The person has on a jacket, which would have seemed overkill a few minutes ago. They steer the cart by shifting their weight, arms laced across the bar, feet on the cart’s lower rack. They glide on by, in direct line to collide with someone else’s cart—and their car. A blue and green something or other. Company car. Good thing the cart doesn’t crash into it, even though they probably could have written off the damages.
The cart racer tries the trunk, but it doesn’t give. The friend tries the back door, then the front. They both pat their pockets. No luck. Cart Racer sat on the trunk and reached into their bags. Two plastic bottles, full of blue liquid. A spark of a smile lifts my face, nostalgia slipping across my tongue. I don’t know exactly what it is, that they’re drinking, but it doesn’t matter. They slap at each other, the nonsense harassing of good friends. I smile to myself again, and think of the good things in the world.
Something touches my hand and I flinch. Raindrops. Right. I had forgotten the windows were open. When I glance in the back seat, everything is dry. Hm. Somehow I’m certain that it’s only raining in front of my car. On the other side of the street light I’m parked by. But the taste of rain still comes through the windows, along with those thin screams. It’s a lullaby of sorts. I draw my knee up, resting my heel on the edge of the driver’s seat. My head tilts, and the angle of my neck wrinkles away the tension in my shoulders. I take what has perhaps been my deepest breath all day.
Wiling away time inside the store on an empty stomach is terrible for her wallet, but Sheila allows herself the small splurge of cake mix and sprinkles. Does she have enough eggs for this? Ah—right, she has eighteen in her basket. She’ll be fine.
Poking down the baking aisle always gets her in the most trouble. Muffins, brownies, cookie bars, blondies—so many treats! Really, you’ve gotta get away from the boxed stuff. But everything she made from scratch turned out to be disappointing, and she hated to go through all that work just to have a 9 by 13 pan of mediocrity for her efforts.
The lights announced her taking her place in line at the same time her phone buzzed. Auntie G, asking if she wanted the recipe for that homemade pot pie. Sheila giggled—a high, scratchy sound at the back of her throat as her chin tucked down to her neck. Maybe next time, she typed out. She didn’t quite trust herself with such a task. She’d slipped her phone in her back pocket when it buzzed again. And kept buzzing. And buzzing. And—Sheila narrowed her eyes at the screen.
Auntie G had sent her ten different pictures of the recipe anyway, jamming whatever invisible wires and signals there were so that her polite refusal had never gone through. Typical. But she still had two unread messages, so she swiped and scrolled until she found it. Ernie, with his usual hunting hat—the kind with ear flaps that was fuzzy inside. Beside him was one of the penguins, onyx eyes as wide as her garnet-orange beak, looking overjoyed.
Brenda says we have to have fun tonight.
Instead of a giggle this time, she let out a long snort. She slips the phone back into her pocket, making a mental note to reply once she gets to her car. She shuffles forward, hefting the basket—heavier than she anticipated, and certain to leave her wallet lighter—onto the ledge of the conveyor belt.
“Is it someone’s birthday?”
“Hm? Oh, no, I was just—”
“You’re having dinner with Ernie, aren’t you?”
Sheila pressed her lips together and pretended to huff out a sigh, but she knew her eyes were shining. The store was too bright for it to have been anything else.
“Ellie—it’s not like that.”
“Then how did you know blue sprinkles are his favorite?”
“He told me.” Sheila blinked, having forgotten both of the facts until now. “It was at your party last year—the one where you had that cookie-decorating contest.”
Ellie raised an eyebrow, teeth glinting under the fluorescents. Sheila realized two moments too late that Ellie considered this information as further evidence of her matchmaking skills. This time when Sheila laughed, it was like hustling out a few gasps, chasing them out of her throat before Ellie could interrogate her more.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket again—and this time it was Auntie G, because the phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. Sheila scooped her groceries into her arms so she’d have an excuse not to answer, and hurried out to the parking lot.
At the top of the hour, I decide I have thirty more minutes of patience left in me. I’ve been here an hour, which I suppose is an acceptable time to wait. I know some people would say I’ve waited too long already, but there’s no harm in letting things be when there’s no rush and I have nothing else to do. Sometimes, waiting is an opportunity. I check the app again—and my email. Still delayed.
The store radio has become ominous in my ears. The songs are a thin grin—the sort of cheerful smile that promises terrible things. If I listen to it for much longer, I’m certain I will be trapped here forever, watching the comings and goings of shoppers and friends and families. That’s what the edges of the lot are for, right next to the employee parking. The Associate of the Month gets to pick their people-watching spot, and of course the manager has their reserved space. Binoculars, snacks, and all.
A woman comes out the sliding doors, interrupting the illusion of white-squared teeth. I realize now that most people’s teeth aren’t actually white. They’re not quite yellow, either. More to a tan color, or a very faint grey. Teeth are like clouds, you know. Not really the color we think they are, and shifting in front of our eyes. We like to believe what we see, until we decide we can’t believe our eyes and decide on some higher-ordered brain process to come up with an acceptable truth.
The woman has bright purple hair and a yellow streak across her cheek. A flashing light follows her down the row. Blip beep. Blip. Beep beep. She looks annoyed but happy. I wonder what she’s excited about, and quietly wish her a delightful evening. A short man comes jogging after her, and my gut tenses. But when he elbows her and offers to take some of her bags, she grins and obliges. Their banter is as warm as the half-set sun. When she laughs, it sparkles off the parking lot puddles, and I tell myself there’s nothing to worry about.
A squeal catches my ears. Another form of laughter, I realize, although it’s from a much smaller body. The fat man exits the store with the baby over his shoulder. The baby reaches for the headlights of the cars as the idle or creep forward on either side of the crosswalk. The man is singing along with the store radio. I think the baby is trying to sing too.
The breeze stirs, pushing the humid air through the cracked windows. Sitting here with the windows half-up, the car has gotten warmer. Not too uncomfortable—yet—but I check the time anyway. My half hour is past. I decide to call, just to check on things. The last pickup slot is from 7 to 8, and there’s always the chance the phone lines will get cut. Electricity is fickle and far less understood than we think. I give them my name and hear the clicking in the background.
“I’m not seeing anything under that name. Did you place the order to be picked up today?”
In my head, I hear a hundred different rude responses to that question.
“I placed it last Friday. I haven’t made any updates to it since Monday.”
“Huh.”
Indeed.
“I got a text saying that it was delayed, but it’s almost at the end of the pickup window, so I just wanted to double check if it might be ready soon.”
“I have no idea why you got that text.”
More clicks in the background. The sun has finally seeped all the way to the ground. It wouldn’t be so dark, if not for the clouds that have nudged their way in front of the stars. A deep blue unfolds itself like plush carpet.
“Did you have alcohol in your order?”
I blink.
“Yes?”
“Okay—it’s here, but none of us can bring it out because we’re all underage. So—I’ll have to get a manager to bring it out to you.”
Was that all it was?
They promise it will be soon. I hang up the phone, shifting again in the driver’s seat. The wind has evaporated but humidity hangs heavy in the air. I slowly take a deep breath. It’s not so much a matter of patience now, but endurance. I should have eaten an hour ago.
Another ninety minutes, I think. That long for me to get my groceries, drive home and put them away, and then curl up somewhere with a bowl of food. I try to remember what’s in my fridge, but I don’t remember the last time I cooked. That’s why we buy groceries, so we can cook things. And eat them. If we’re lucky, we might not remember what is eating away at us, nibbling at our toes and our souls in the dark.
The parking lot is full of lights. Lights spaced every so often, outlining parking spots. Headlights from cars as they rumble in place or prowl through the lanes. Tail lights as drivers do the same. That blue light that winks and stutters by my left eye, the one that is supposed to be attached to security things hidden somewhere under the concrete. The light of the moon, reflected in the rain-puddles.
Faceless eyebrows and grinning mouths, issuing laughter and get back here! I want to close my eyes. I want to absorb it all. I want to remember this. The magic of it. Did you know that the world is full of ordinary people, doing completely ordinary things like grocery shopping, and it is the most extraordinary thing in the world?
Ernie is way better at chopping vegetables than she is. Sheila reminds herself not to get into a fight with him when knives are nearby. But, now that she thinks about it, she’s never gotten into a fight with him. Not seriously, anyway. Just that one time when they argued about the ratio of chocolate to marshmallow to graham cracker that s’mores should have. That had been at another of Ellie’s parties.
Shit, she really has been behind this all along.
“What?”
“What?”
Sheila looked up from where she was putting bowls and spoons on the table, brows wrinkled. Ernie stood at the stove, working the ladle through the soup with the same expression on his face.
“You said something about someone being behind?” A smile nudged the piercing in his jaw. “Is Auntie G playing matchmaker again?”
“No—actually it’s Ellie. You remember that bonfire party she threw last year?”
“I’m pretty I craved s’mores for like a week afterwards.”
“Honestly, I didn’t want to wash my jeans or hoodie afterwards. Campfire smoke smells so good.”
“Wait–” Ernie gives her a funny look—like he’s trying not to laugh. “I’m pretty sure that was my hoodie?”
“Really? Did I ever give it back? I’m so sorry if I didn’t. I can check after dinner if you want?”
Ernie’s smile widens and Sheila tells herself the kitchen is warm because of what’s cooking on the stove. Except the ladle rests against the side of the pot, softly scraping against the metal as the soup starts to boil. It takes her a minute to realize that he’s staring at her, because she’s been staring at him too. Blue eye, green eye, two eyes on her. Something red and warm in his cheeks, and not just from the kitchen’s gold lighting.
A face rises beside his own. Thin. Grey. Screaming. The ghosts of marshmallows and graham crackers past, she thinks. She can even smell the scorch of it, and it tickles the back of her throat. She starts to laugh at the strangeness of it—at how memories can take over all her senses—but then she is coughing and she turns away, covering her mouth with her arm.
“Are you al—”
But then Ernie is coughing too, and the ghost of him—no the ghost beside him—is shrieking. Shrill, long, flat notes. A forlorn wail that rings in her ears, blares through her brain. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
The tears are from the coughing, she tells herself, but that knot in her chest won’t unwind. She manages to stumble into a chair and drops her head into her hands. For a while, all she can do is cower in the dark behind her eyes.
Promises have a way of giving you a reason to hold on. To wait just a little while longer. The dark curls at the windows like the blankets I wish I was under. There aren’t any stars out, that I can see. I tilt my head back anyway, even though my car doesn’t have a sun roof.
The air shifts, stirring through the car’s interior. I try to think again, what I have in my refrigerator. Or my freezer. Hell—I could settle for a bowl of cereal at this point, or even nothing at all.
Home. Home. Home.
Time still stalls, promises or no promises. I close my eyes and focus on drawing one deep breath. I let it out slowly, and then tell myself to breathe in again.
Soon. I promise, soon.
Still, the minutes tick by. My last reserves of patience have been depleted. My internal toddler isn’t whining—we’re now at full on squalling. The breeze brushes my cheek like the fat man’s fingers against the baby’s. But I have no one to reach for, only the vague promise that what I asked for will come to pass.
At ten-to-eight, I pick up my phone and dial again. I grimace at my own snippiness when I say I called twenty minutes ago. I sound rude. It would be far worse to go on a tirade about how I’ve been here for two hours. Whoever’s behind the counter, answering the phone—they don’t know that. And they might have had a terrible day, so I try to rein in my impatience.
You could have gone home.
Except the voice that chides in my ear conveniently overlooks the fact that the first time I called, they said they weren’t sure why I got the text in the first place that said my order was delayed. Not to mention that they didn’t even see the order.
“They’re bringing that out to you right now.”
“Thank you.”
I try to sound sincere, genuine—but I don’t know what nice sounds like. So I quietly hang up and stretch my leg. Blood rushes behind my knee, along my shin, between my toes. A swarm of scribbled nerve endings all scrambled out of place. A ringing in my ears encases me in a form of silence. The screaming doors, as they squeal back and forth on their automatic slides, have vanished. For a minute or three, I float.
A horn blares and I breathe again. The chatter grows louder in the dark, filling the spaces with something known. The radio recedes beneath all of this, and I am suddenly alert for the first time in—how long have I been here?
It is a week, I’m certain. I have watched this storefront for years. Last century, I saw the first customer struggle against those white-square teeth. They staggered out in a tattered shirt with a bleeding shoulder and a bruised jaw, a basket of oranges and a loaf of bread in hand. The things we go through, in order to eat.
A hand hovers near Sheila’s shoulder. She usually considers herself practical—capable of happiness and having fun, allowing herself a cry if she needs to have it out—but she’s not like this. Oh, she is never forlorn, so desperately weepy, so absolutely distraught.
These words don’t even belong in her vocabulary,. They don’t belong to her, but they cross her mind anyway. Like the splayed one-dimensional fingers that slide across her arm. Flat. A shadow, a ghost–but one that fades instead of fastening on to her. Or so she hopes.
“It’s okay,” she tells Ernie and herself. “I’m alright, it’s okay.”
Ernie squeezes her elbow and squats in front of her. Sheila blinks back the last of it—the smoke, the tears, the confusion. She shakes her head, a smirk sneaking around the corner of her mouth.
“That half and half is some strong shit.”
For a moment, Ernie’s face wrinkles. And then he laughs. A roaring rainbow of sound, and she knows this is what she loves most about him. It was the type of laugh that would turn heads in a five-star restaurant, because how dare anyone have such a raucous time among thousand-dollar bottles of wine and imported cakes from a continent away?
Sheila grins, wider than she realizes. It is a stupid grin, a silly, grin. It is full and toothy and proud. Of him, and of herself, for having stumbled her way to this—whatever it was, whatever it could be, whatever it would be. Because it would be something.
It would be whatever they made it. Maybe sometimes it would mean fancy five-star dinners and dancing, and other nights it would be a bonfire and stuffing themselves with sugar, and it would be cooking new recipes and perfecting the art of pastry-making and—
“Tell me when can have adventures like this forever.”
Her hands have found his, or maybe his have found hers, but their fingers are laced together and a pulse of blood beats through their palms, the tips of their fingers, the creases between their thumbs.
“We’re just two ordinary people,” Ernie says, half-smiling. “Doing ordinary, every-day things.”
“It’s wonderful, right?”
“It’s amazing. It’s extraordinary.”
She throws her arms around his neck and his palms press against the flat of her back. He’s hugged her before, and she’s hugged him. But this hug is different, she thinks, even though she can’t say why.
My vision goes fuzzy at the edges, staring at the white square teeth of the storefront. Straining for a familiar cart stacked with plastic totes. Five minutes of shoppers and carts and not once have I blinked. But then a neon vest comes out—not the standard on I’m used to. Manager. I sit up straighter, smashing at the lock button and pulling a smile across my face.
The Manager has honey-blonde hair. Their hair is pulled back into a ponytail, but it snakes around their shoulder and I’m certain three glowing green eyes peek out at me. They blink and wink in the dark—excited to have their natural habitat but confused by all the lights. The smile on my lips suddenly isn’t so tight.
When I’m asked for my ID, I nearly forget that I had put it in my pocket decades ago. When I thought I would be waiting ten minutes instead of ten hours for the cart to come trundling out. I fish it out, suddenly alarmed by the closeness of the heat and the discomfort of my body and the stickiness of my clothing. I force myself to breathe. My lower lip trembles, but the window is tinted and my hand covers my mouth. Still, the urge to cry is a rush that, for the longest time, refuses to recede.
They lean forward, the Manager’s neon orange vest reflecting off the window. The inside of my car glows, luminescent from their vest and the vivacious eyes hiding in the Manager’s hair. I am tempted to shrink into myself. I try to think of something to apologize for, certain I must beg their patience.
There’s no reason for it, really, other than the fact of my existing. Rudely slammed into this juncture of space and time—ill-fitting, unbecoming, shamefully exhausted when I should have much greater endurance for these in-between years. Instead I feel too old, fragile, small.
The Manager apologizes three times for my wait. Not in a row—it’s scattered throughout the interaction. A sincere sorry is a sweet greeting, under acceptable circumstances. Groceries in the trunk. Eggs up front so they won’t get crushed. Another sorry as substitutions are mentioned. I’m sure I won’t mind them, so long as I have the pie filling and the crusts—because I wanted to bake a pie. I remember that now, and a knot pushes its way into my throat again and the world beyond the windshield sparkles, blurs, glistens like a galaxy of diamonds.
“Have a good night, sweetheart.”
“Thanks.” I smile and mean it when I say, “You too.”
I wait until the Manager is on the other side of the crosswalk again. Approaching those sliding, half-screaming doors without a shadow of doubt. I back out of what has been my residence in this realm of chaos for the last cycle of my sanity. I am slow to leave this place, but so is everyone.
V. H. King's Ink 
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