Pink by Benjamin Niespodziany

“Pink packaged peanuts are half priced at the convenience store run by the woman with pink hair. As pink as the bubblegum she pops, as pink as the headphones she never removes.”

Pink packaged peanuts are half priced at the convenience store run by the woman with pink hair. As pink as the bubblegum she pops, as pink as the headphones she never removes. Her phone is pink lemonade with a scratch and sniff case. Her mother knows very little about her but she knows her daughter’s phone has an aroma. Her eyelashes are pink, her earrings are pink strawberry milkshakes. She has pink curlers that wrap her pink braids. Her high heels are bright pink. They cover her pink socks which cover her pink toes. All of this pink has people talking, keeping her afloat as her heart remains midnight blue, blue like a waterfall, blue like a dewdrop, blue like a used notepad, a blue heart that beats beneath her pink scarf, her pink cocoon, a blue heart that no one needs to know about at the convenience store full of half priced pink packaged peanuts.

*

Benjamin Niespodziany is a night librarian at the University of Chicago. He runs the multimedia art blog [neonpajamas] and has had work published in Ghost City Press, Pithead Chapel, HOOT Review, Occulum, and formercactus.