Allison Creighton

Why the deli had a fourteen-page application for a sandwich maker
was beyond me. For God’s sake, a two-year-old could make a sandwich
if you showed her the ropes. And the questions were absurd:
How would your friends describe you? Where do you see yourself
ten years from now? When I got to, What is your greatest fear?
on page eight, I’d had it. What kind of deli in a strip mall
has to know that? I just needed money to cover the rent
while I found a way out. A way out of that suffocating town,
not a way out of my life. I was sick of the gossip
about who was on top and who the losers were.
I tossed the application and went to a bar
where I drank cheap beer and tried to tune out
the conversations around me, wanting to disappear
and figure out who to become. I left after dark –
and as I was cutting through a field to my car,
I fell into a goddamn ditch. In a pit of freezing mud,
I rubbed my twisted ankle. I could still hear voices
coming from the bar before a gunshot stopped them cold.
Warm water pooled around me in waves
until I was no longer in a ditch, but swimming
across a lake that looked like a sea. I swam
and held my breath so that I wouldn’t waste it.
I swam without thinking about where I was heading
or if I had the stamina to arrive anywhere at all.