the fat and the furious

                       

she stood there in the checkout line pouring Skittles into her gaping hole.  her face was covered in acne and scars and her belly fell from a shirt too short to support her needs.  it hung there white and veiny and I kept waiting for it to somehow drop off her sides, for her arm fat to slump down like a heavy sweatshirt kicked to the floor and for her face to peel away into a beautiful woman.  at least the woman she might have been before this moment, arguing with the cashier over the price of Diet Pepsi as flecks of red and yellow, orange and green leapt from her open mouth onto the conveyer belt where I had already begun unloading my groceries.