Tuesday 3 August 2010

Working in the supermarket

I arrived. The place looks clean from a distance, but the closer you are, the more the layers of filth reveal themselves to you. Within an hour, my hands are the greybrown of the thin wrinkled flesh of those oldhands I tentatively drop coins and paper into. Everyone here is dying, if you rubbed that skin it would flake away like mothwings. I talk to a man for two hours; the blood supply to his brain is compromised and he's probably dying. I'm on my knees, sorting mars bars into neat rows ruined quickly by fat parents placating their fat children; so I  put more on the pile. I'm made of papercuts and my knees are dirty and my nails are broken.