Shame is you, and like your cheeks, pink is your color.

The checkout line is long and the impatience from you is growing in your son as well as you line your few items along the counter. You’ve already added them up forwards and backwards in your head seventeen times already.

Seventeen dollars, seventeen times.

Your son stands in the empty cart and reaches for a chocolate bar which you snap from him in disgust tossing it back onto the rack. The tears flow from his eyes and you struggle to hold back your own as register begins to beep loudly, each time raising the total, begging him softly to stop even though all you want to do is grab him and shake him into silence.

Fumbling in your purse to pull out the coins that settled at the bottom you notice the woman from before is behind you now starting to line the counter with her extravagance. And as you try to determine if what you’re feeling deep in your bag is a nickel or a breath mint you cant help but notice the overwhelming silence that now surrounds you all.

The cashier is waiting semi-patiently, staring off into space behind you, probably counting down the minutes till her shift is over. The woman behind you had pulled out her iphone and was tapping on the screen feverously in silence, angling it slightly under the florescent light to reduce the glare. Your sons unnatural silence however liberating it was, was still disturbing.

You turn your eyes to him and it takes a moment to realize what’s in his mouth is not his pacifier but the chocolate bar once more. As you pull it back from him you see that it’s open.

Slimy and wet, he somehow managed to suck it open, chocolate drooled from his mouth, which whined in protest and the cashier laughed lightly as she reached over with the handheld scanner.

“Oh there you go.” She smiled as she added it. Your eyes flickered up to the register once more which now read $18.24.

Eighteen twenty four…

Eighteen f*****g dollars and twenty four cents.

You don’t have enough.

Shame is you, and like your cheeks, pink is your color.