human error ix.
I never thought I’d be on his hit list.
He seemed like such a nice person;
all sales smiles and big business.
He wore a cape and heavily knotted hair.
His nametag read
‘The Dazzling Dante’.
He smiled at me.
“Welcome to Dazzling Dante’s Magic Store.”
I didn’t reply.
“Call me Dante.”
Dante and I exchanged awkward looks
for a second or two
before I skulked
to the back of the store.
“Need help?”
I shook my head,
convincing myself that this was a bad idea
and that I shouldn’t have even
walked in.
But I couldn’t just leave without buying something.
He was watching me.
I sighed at the feeling of my nearly empty pockets
and dragged myself back up
to where he was standing.
“Yeah?”
He said from the bottom of
his coffee cup.
“I…uh…”
The rest of my sentence was eaten up
by the little Einsteins.
They screamed and shouted,
held up signs,
pointing to something
behind Dante.
Then I saw it.
It shined like a trophy.
It called me.
The Einsteins were practically begging for it,
now.
I had to do something.
“…what’s that?”
I asked him.
He smiled.
“It’s a wand.”
He said.
“A magic wand.”
I found myself laughing.
“Magic isn’t real.”
The little Einsteins scolded me.
“Not always, but sometimes…”
Dante set the mahogany sliver of wood
down in front of me.
I refrained from tracing my fingers
across the detailed woodwork.
“…sometimes the world is weird.”
I nodded.
“Okay.”
He perked up after a second.
“I actually have something else
in the back I could show you.
You’d probably like that.”
And then he was gone.
It was just me
and the wand.
The little Einsteins told me
to take it.
So I did.
YOU ARE READING
glitch
PoetryI am a monster. Everybody knows it, but they're too afraid to say it out loud. My body's made of static and dead skin cells, and I don't know if knowing that i'm a failure is what makes me sad or if it's the fact that everyone else knows i'm a failu...
