"Pinpricks"

All her feelings lately come in sharp stabs, sudden rushes. They're gone just as quickly as they come.

She sees a mother yelling at her kid in the grocery store, cheeks gone red, tendons drawn tight like ropes in her neck. The boy tucks his face in between two cans of peas and stares back into the shade. She wants to grip both of their shoulders- to soothe the child so the wrinkles smooth out on his face, and to clench the mother so her fingers leave marks in an ache of skin and bones.

Her arms twitch out, the tiniest bit; invisible to the eye, but she can feel it. She walks past them and doesn't do a thing. It isn't her place, anyway. The anger, the little jolts in her blood, the itch to stream screaming and kicking. Those urges pulse lower and lower until they're gone.

Her feet slide along the mopped tile floor, past freezers full of food tucked away in cardboard boxes and a sign advertising potato chips, two bags for the price of one. Soon she is another blank face and the boy, still staring into the recesses of canned vegetables, never notices her.