Girl in the Store (May 24, 2019)

As she sat in the less than 10 items line I noticed how she stood. One leg bent, her arm across her abdomen, hand holding her opposite forearm. The basket loosely hanging off her three fingers neared the ground, but never dropped. She looked the way we all feel: tired.

Her loose curls were unruly but beautiful, as if she spent hours on them that morning. But she didn’t. That morning she walked out her front door, raced to the bus stop and breathlessly walked up the steps and sat down in the second row. Her all but empty backpack sitting next to her; she didn’t want company. As she made her way to school she couldn’t keep the rushing train-wreck of thoughts from cycling through. Staring blankly out the window she dreamed of a happy home. A home where her father came home before one in the morning and for once wasn’t drunk. A home where her mother smiled bright at her instead of the all too familiar vacant stare she received. A home where she could come home from school without having to rush to her job, and then her second one. But that’s not the hand she was dealt. 

She goes to school, which is more than most of her classmates can say. The teachers share the little knowledge they have, but “why should [they] care when none of the students do?” There is no bloody battle to be first in the class – top of the food chain. No competition between who’s GPA is higher or who is taking more AP classes.