You Might Eat Organic, but You're Still Full of Baloney

Originally published in the Winter 2021 Edition of Northwest Review.

My aunt, you know, the former probation chief, says that they probably served you a white bread sandwich for dinner and maybe powdered eggs for breakfast. She speculated that it probably had two pitiful scraps of nutritionally devoid bologna between the stale, tasteless slices. Subsistence fare. I hope you looked at that sandwich, in all its over-processed, non-organic, carbohydrate-filled glory and regretted every decision that brought you to it. You probably didn’t eat it. It didn’t come from Whole Foods.

Still, I know regret is a lot to hope for. I looked at your mug shot today when I had to circulate it around the office for notice purposes. Thanks for that, by the way. It’s always been a personal goal to explain to my co-workers that my entire weekend was a stress-fest of dealing with your mistakes and why. You didn’t look contrite to me. Your brown eyes stared straight into the camera like it was a Sears Portrait Studio shoot, and your lips had that slight curl, that sarcastic no…