Haibun

(talking to my childhood friend)

Everyone here goes to the Wawa, she says. She’s a seventh-generation Texan. After she moved to Jersey it took her a full year to buy one of those puffy winter coats and closed-toe shoes. Do you have those where you are? The Wawa? People here, they go to the Wawa and buy food and then they go outside and they eat over the trash cans. The one I go to, for gas or cigarettes or whatever, there’s always three or four dudes standing around the trash can, eating sandwiches. Like raccoons. It’s crazy. She went up there to be with her long-distance partner, but things aren’t working out. He does this thing where he gets mad and he just … hovers, she says. Like, he just stands there and doesn’t say anything. He just stands there in the kitchen pissed off and I’m supposed to guess why.  

We could take the train—
New York in fifteen minutes.
We don’t. But we could.

Stephanie Hashagen lives in Verona, Wisconsin with her husband and four cats. She is a claims examiner for a disability insurance company. She is deeply uncomfortable writing about herself in the third person.