Everyone has to go to the Metro. That’s first: get the meat. Hamburg, 1.99. Write it down, keep within. Budget. Budget.
You can count every penny. You can make your plans. You can have: No Frills.
You can make your plans and write your lists and pay your charities and find good use of a free note pad and create a future without breast cancer TM, and still
plums 1.29
mini wheats 2.10
milk, I mean you still need milk
and still
it’s distracting
the charity could sue,
on the basis of copyright infringement,
someone who proclaimed a cancer-free future
they own that (a boundary)
2.79
2.49
3.99 you’re getting wild
Stop counting.
cherries, watermelons, Ocean Spray!
lose steam. buy lemonade.
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Kirsten Madsen’s fiction has been published in The Walrus, Alaska Quarterly Review, Prairie Fire, The New Quarterly, and elsewhere. She was runner-up for the CBC Short Story Prize in 2015, and long-listed for the CBC Non-Fiction Prize in 2020. Kirsten’s story collection, People Who Like This, will be published by Freehand Books in 2027. She lives in the Yukon on the traditional territories of the Kwanlin Dun First Nation and the Ta’an Kwach’an Council.
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The Litter I See Project 