POOBLECK

My can of ginger ale still has ginger ale in it. I put it in the little pouch that holds the barf bag and the snack box menu and it's stashed and sloshing but it hasn't splashed into my backpack yet. My shoelace is grey but the chili cream cheese I spilled on it was Orange Red Speckled. My plastic cup, bent by the pouch's firm spine into an hourglass, has ginger ale in it too. And ice, which is melting and melting, and the liquid is getting more and more colorless and colorless. I can see the inside of the pouch through it, grey like the stain on my shoelace on which, while walking and eating a bagel, I spilled a sunset of chili cream cheese. Colors have a way of reacting to me, which is different from their way of reacting to one another: I did not realize that the smushed pastels of chili cream cheese could fall with such outrageous density just to make my white shoelace so stupidly grey. A barf bag’s worth of