I look down the shelves, all the same shade of brown, warm in the sunlight, potentially perilous. I can’t keep focus. I keep breaking up. I choose rye, it seems dignified and things are awfully broken. I wonder if the checkout woman can see that I am awfully broken. I wonder what the love I had would say, watching me play a role I hate. I imagine the bottle breaking. The silence of my life since we broke up. A bell rings as I swing open the door. I got what I was looking for.
Hannah Shields lives in Brooklyn and is a bartender.