It’s so hot, the sun has been burning so long, I can feel the paint on the dingy grocery store fading from the inside, but my attention has been diverted from the discount bin that today is filled with bags of “naturally imperfect” fruit by an unusual sight. 

He’s young – by which I mean about my age, which is not young anywhere else. In this town of farmers, retirees and retired farmers, this town barely big enough for a police detachment – there is an alien man.

He is wearing an actual shirt instead of a t. He is not jaw-droppingly, but nicely good looking. Gosling hair, no beard.

He does not belong. He must be here for a reason. A death of a parent or grandparent? A work assignment? A mission? He doesn’t look like a missionary – he is not travelling obviously paired. There has to be a reason for him to be here.

For what reason am I here? I do not belong here, either. I want to say it just happened. But it was a decision, the easy decision at the time, the decision I thought was right, the responsible decision, but so easy it felt more like fate than choice. I did not expect it to last so long. It did not and does not look like a trap to me, although it must have for others, who did not come. 

Sometimes, I think, smart is more stupid than stupid. 

The stranger smiles and gestures I should go first. I reach for the Omega-3 eggs without hesitation, like I don’t even know the bog-standard ones with their supply-management prices exist. What are we, communists? Hillbillies? Trash? I’m glad I showered before coming out this morning. 

I don’t open the egg carton to check what I’ve snagged. He won’t. 

I want him to know I don’t belong here either. I don’t come from here; I won’t imagine my future being here. This place that feels like it’s dying.

The man reaches for the brown cage-free eggs. Once I thought I would always buy the fancy eggs, the organic produce, visit the farmer’s market every week, do everything perfectly, live beautifully. Still, I could be with him. 

I’ll say it better. 

He could be with me. Why not? I’m not dead yet. 

I wonder if he’s married. I wonder if wondering that first is a sign I’ve been in this town, with its three churches within ten minutes’ walk, too long, or if it’s simply a sign I have some remaining common decency. 

We exchange no words. 

I go down the aisle on the juice side and he takes the frozen dinner side. I stop to confirm the tomato juice I used to like is still too expensive now and he’s gone.

I am certain he comes from the city. The City. Any city. Noise and hum of movement, constant possibility, excitement, conflict. Living in a sense of anonymity and limit testing. His salary increases each year. He is good looking and he might know it and maybe he’s also a nice guy. We could go back to the city together.

The cashier and I agree the weather is improving, or that it’s terrible, as soon as we’re done speaking, I forget. The cashier is one of my neighbours. Everyone here is a neighbour. They know I talk to myself as I walk the streets, most of the streets lacking sidewalks.

I miss sidewalks. I miss crowds. 

Would the stranger hold hands with me in a crowd? What kind of crowd would it be? A music festival crowd? It would not, praise Jesus, be country music. Maybe metal, or classic rock. I could learn to live with rap.

I wonder if the stranger is straight. 

Leaving the grocery store’s parking lot, I watch out for wandering deer dying of thirst, the feral little birds scattering before me. I wonder if the man has ever driven standard shift. I wonder how much debt he’s in; how much he drinks. 

Does he dream of staying here, in a small town?  Does he think it’s peaceful here? There are many worse places to be. If I really didn’t like it here, I would leave, wouldn’t I?

I think how it’s not fair, he being a he, that stranger might well have all his life to decide on an answer to that question. What is irresponsible? What is responsibility? 

What is our obligation to the past; to the future? What about Darwinian failure, the lack of genetic legacy? I thought I would be surer about it. It feels more and more like a thing that will simply happen/not happen. Without anyone/thing clearly asking me the question.

If I leaned in, I might have smelled mint toothpaste, same flavour as mine.

Does he sometimes pull pillows over his ears in bed at night, so that he won’t hear the boogie man coming?

I don’t trust my mind. I want it to be more afraid of not being animal enough. I want it to feel free to do everything it can. To be mammal. I want it to tell me to go make a baby with a stranger, do it. Just do it. Who cares who with. I want it to not matter who with.

I want my body to at least be able to do a handstand.

Some people wish to transcend their bodies. Consider their bodies animal inconveniences, holding back crystalline minds they must free.

I wonder about the stranger’s sense of humour.

I do not want to be left here alone. And I do not want to fail another. 

In all likelihood my mind will continue to win over my body and I will never do a handstand.

I go home and I put the groceries away. That is something I know how to do.

Would the nice-looking stranger I saw at the grocery store laugh at little things, like eggs and DNA? Like the little feral birds breaking their necks against the windows, despite carefully applied reflective dots? It took me hours to put those dots up.

I open my carton of eggs before I put them in the fridge.

Does the stranger know how the smoke fills the valley every summer, while we watch the slopes burn and admire the pyrocummulus clouds that rise? We are kept safe, we’re told, by the orchards that keep being torn out and dug back in as vineyards, spraying the river and wine into the sky, until that too goes dry.

Kilmeny MacMichael writes from a small town in western Canada's Okanagan Valley. She has over two dozen short works published, including with Short Édition, Cirque and Arachne Press.

Visual Art
Michelle Geoga is a writer and artist originally from Chicago, living in Southwest Michigan. Her writing has appeared in Little Patuxent Review, Five on The Fifth, Bridge Eight, Cleaver, Longleaf and elsewhere. Her visual work has been featured in New American Paintings, the Center for Fine Art Photography, Woman Made Gallery and elsewhere. She has an MFA in Writing and a BFA in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and was granted a residency at Yaddo. She can be found at michellegeoga.com.


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