Little hands

By Chrys Enns, Contributor

 

Once when I was walking home from my minimum wage job

that I hated more than anything most days but that day the most

I saw, to my surprise

one

two

three

five

raccoons in the children’s playground near my house that I shared with my two other roommates.

I know that raccoons are feral

vicious

hungry

but at that moment I was that, and more

and so I reached into my pocket to grab the cookie I had taken

(stolen)

from work

(but it is okay to steal from a job that you hate, in fact I encourage you to steal up to the amount that they should pay you for healthcare coverage)

and I crumbled it up into little bits and I scattered the crumbs across the playground

and the racoons scampered over and grabbed them with their little gloved hands

and they ate them the way I ate my food on my fifteen-minute lunch break in the middle of my eight-hour shift standing and serving other happy people who had more than me

and I thought that maybe I was a racoon with little thieving hands and a mask and little sharp teeth

but then I got scared and shooed them away and they ran into the night, scampering across the road

and I scampered too.