a place called kitchen floor

part four in a week-long series all about the rituals of being friends.

black and white linoleum:
g's butt covers one black square and one white square
f's butt covers one white square, one black square, and half of another white square
p's butt is in the air because she is laying on her stomach.
the refrigerator just kicked on and g can feel the hum in her back
which is leaned against the bottom door.
f notices the splatter of tomato sauce at the top of the dishwasher
and follows it with her eyes all the way down.
it streaks its way into a dried up river along the bottom edge
where no one will ever get it out from between the white part and that metal border thing.
g wonders what f is thinking about.
p wonders how f will tell her mother.
f wonders if her face is regular-crying-puffy or sobbing-crying-puffy.
she asks them which kind of puffy it is, and g assures her lovingly that it is
indeed
sobbing-crying-puffy.
p agrees.
they are laughing like lunatics
that laughing that hurts and sounds either ridiculous and high-pitched or absolutely soundless
and g crumples the empty ritz cracker sleeve
and throws it at f
they have long since eaten all the crackers, eaten all the pop-tarts, eaten what they could stand of the cool ranch doritos, drank up all the diet coke.
now they are drinking regular coke
and trading the can of easy cheese back and forth
to squirt onto their spitty fingers and eat crackerless until it's all gone.
f lays down and even though she can feel the crumbs poking into her arm as it stretches out beside the stove
even though she is sad and pissed off and humiliated
even though her head hurts in a way that advil cannot touch
she knows there is no place she'd rather be right now.