Scenic breath-taking garbage. Bits and bobs swirl before me as I decide to answer my boss’s perennial morning question: How are  you doing?

There’s a flutter in my stomach. I’m about to  jump  out somewhere, from the trash of niceties and into something unknown. If I can just wait long enough, look down long enough, I’d maybe be presented with the slightest slice of solidity to hop on. But hope can be a whoopee cushion, a humiliating noise that comes from your own mouth–a chuckle, as I answer my boss’s most innocuous daily salutation.

My answer to her question: I am wanting so much.

I get a laugh. Yeah, she says, chuckling. Me too.

She has no idea for me or I for her, for those responses. We are, for the moment, I feel, equals.