Dracula apologized to the blue check-out woman he didn’t have the money for the hamburger and he felt so terrible like some dumb little kid but she smiled with her white teeth and her cheap uniform and told him it was alright and she took his handful of green dollar bills and gave him his white plastic bags of milk and bread and chicken he caught at their plastic loop handles feeling stupid and relieved and he wondered if his memories of shopping with his mother as a kid and watching her take her checkbook out of her purse or push a metal shopping cart full of brown paper bags were as distant as they seemed.

dracula came home after work and sat at the dinner table with his kid because his wife was still working her second job he sighed looking at his plate of macaroni and cheese wondering whether the days where his father came home at night to his mother putting dinner on the table were idyllic as they seem now