Laurie Lyons

Portal in the Piggly Wiggly

Portal in the Piggly Wiggly, by Laurie Lyons 7:42 A.M. Tuesday morning. Raven hits the snooze button. She will hit it two more times, then wake up. Next is coffee and granola, then dressing in black skinny jeans and a black T-shirt. She has 5 identical sets of each. She accessorizes with heavy black eyeliner, black combat boots and colorful socks (which no one can see, but she knows are there). The apron will come later. At 8:20 she walks out the front door to catch the 8:26 bus that will take her 7 ½ miles to the Piggly Wiggly. Here she walks down aisle 7 to the employee break room, places her things in her locker, and puts on her red apron before checking the board for today’s assignment. This is precisely the sequence of events of every weekday morning of Raven’s life for the past 6 years. This particular Tuesday, Raven is feeling especially numb, as if she could sleepwalk through her day and no one would know the difference. Half alive and half something else. Not dead, but not really living either. Certainly not living enough to even imagine that things could be different.