my museum of sensitivities

A man is outside with a metallic shaker and he will not stop troubling its many metallic sheets. The rattle produces a shimmering sound that is so loud. His child listens to this without making any sound himself, which means the father only shakes harder.

I am inside but the rattle defies any kind of barrier. Inside, there’s no air conditioning in the cafe so the air is woven from so many thick strands that wool over my mouth. I’m also hungry, which I don’t know explicitly, though I do realize the existence of a faint scrim of nausea seasicking behind my bellybutton. There’s a man standing so close to me that his mats of dark arm hair almost touch me. He loudly lectures his wife. The volume he’s exerting is necessary in order to part the din.

Another wave of people presses into the cafe. J is in this wave that is really a line. The metallic shaker makes its way inside now too and everyone’s voices, even the hiss of the milk foamer, rises to combat the metal layers’ conflict. The…