A vignette, stark & blurry
The girl working the register is sick. Red faced, sniffling, swallowing repeatedly, more sniffling, sneezing, watery eyes…don’t know & can’t tell if she suffers from allergies or sinusitis or, hell, the latest, horrible variant of COVID-19, but she looks so miserable. I feel sad for her. Neither one of us wears a mask.
This is somewhere in Western Washington, but I can’t recall which store or even which town or city I met this young woman at the register, this, well, teenage White girl. Maybe it was Friday Harbor. Maybe it was Seattle. Good Lord, is my memory going? Dementia terrifies me. Days and weeks later, however, I can see her sniffling and wheezing in her red outfit in front of the cash register just as if she stands here in this moment right now. Everything else around her is a silvery-gray blur. She stands there dressed in red, suffering. Outside the sun shines down thru blue skies.
William Dudley Bass
Tuesday 22 Aug 2023
Seattle, WA
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
USA
Copyright © 2023 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.