Sneeze-Guard

She was the only one in line, that is, she was only one point with no body close enough to constitute another point, therefore there really was no line.

Her gaze was to the sneeze-guard as it would be to an open-casket viewing. So many types of meat in one place, laid out among the too unnatural, all-American squares of cheese; the too unnatural, all-American art of vectored tiles; the four-tone mosaic signifying nothing. Tongue groomed itself compulsively against Incisors, skimming off the odium that congeals when food groups collide. A sick flash of taking her fiancé to that 10 year reunion.

She tried to guess which animal went with what shade of pink, then tried to stop guessing before Tongue whittled itself to a single snapping nerve. This platter is a pattern, a matrix, an equation. Protein + fat + dairy = Nutrition, therefore, carbon + hydrogen + nitrogen = Yum. Prix fixe.

A slice of ham (ham?) was folded onto itself, the curve and collapse empirically elegant. It could be the stock photo for a picture frame if the world weren't so prejudiced -- content aside, of course; its virtue was all form, like a trite turn of phrase swept by Wrist and Fingertips into florid calligraphy.

Thumb took it by the loop and shook it at the florescent light. It shined at her. Why so wet? It didn't answer. But she thought she saw, in the certain arc of its marbled fat, the outline of an oink. So she'd been right about the ham! Now we're making some connections! Now to put them down the conveyor belt of her digestive tract and dissemble those polypeptides, repackage them into muscle tissue + excrement + energy!

At once every Part of her knew: there is a point, better than any line. It is the point. The very point of adulthood: to progress from her mother's unpasteurized milk (a phase lasting only two months -- intimacy made Tongue nervous even then), to something as modern as a computer chip. Now that is a real miracle! Life, literally down to a science: an input/output flowchart with such delicious lineations, and because of them, wholesome satiety, a final weaning from control-starved colic.

And -- more good news! -- the sudden realization that her fiancé never actually went to any reunion. A mere anxious fantasy. Really he'd left by then, they say because she preferred the feel of her own bones to his body heat. But she won't allow herself to sink toward such realities, at least not until this victory's been plotted in her Progress Chart.

Thumb let the ham (ham!) fall flat onto her plastic tray. She tried to feel close to it despite the change. It's a good thing no one's allowed cutlery on that side of the sneeze-guard. To saw this into pieces so soon might be traumatic.

.

Ekleksographia:
Wave Three

May, 2010

Fiction

Eliza Kane

A native of Vermont, Eliza C. Kane is a writer and translator currently teaching and completing a Masters in English at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where her work on utopian landscape ideology in American literature has developed into their first ever critical/creative hybrid thesis project. Other creative and non-fiction work have appeared in publications such as Inertia Magazine and Stranded in Stereo.