MY HEAD IS ON THE HAM SLICER

I am walking through a grocery store.

It is a normal grocery store, with its searing fluorescent lights overhead, its squeaky tile floors, its stack of coupons piled up on the customer service desk.

I push my empty cart through the automatic doors. I almost hit a woman on my way toward the deli counter. I apologize.

She tells me it is alright, but she does not look at me.

I see her eyes dart in every direction.

She looks at my shoes, my empty cart, down at her blouse, at the stack of coupons.

The woman does not look at me. She walks away.

I walk away too.

I do not look back at the woman.

I am at the grocery store to buy ham.

I continue pushing my cart toward the deli counter.

The counter is across the store, at the far end. I pass all the aisles to get there.

No one looks at me. Not the little boy laying on his belly, pretending to shoot a gun in my direction, not his mother.

Not the girls gossiping among the tomatoes.

They all see me walk past them, but they do not look at me. I do not know why.

The man behind the deli counter does not look at me. Even when I tell him hello, even when I tell him that I would like half a pound of the ham that I am pointing at.

He nods, neck craning to look up at the ceiling, and asks me if I am sure that this is what I want, and turns the ham around so I can see.

When the ham is turned, it looks at me.

It is the only thing that looks at me.

It has my hair, my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Even my teeth.

This ham is my head. I do not know if I have a head on my body anymore.

Maybe I never had one to begin with.

Yes, this is what I want, I say to the man behind the deli counter. He nods again.

He takes it, the ham, my head, up in his hand and begins to slice with great effort in his back-and-forth motion.

Slice after slice falls away, onto a thin sheet of plastic. The plastic floods with blood after a moment.

Blood drips onto the floor and down into the drain near the man’s feet.

The blood does not bother him, and it does not bother me.

The man picks up the slices, and puts them in a plastic bag.

Blood pools at the bottom of the bag.

Enjoy that, he tells me. I say thank you, and throw the bag into my cart. It lands with a wet slap and a splatter of blood.

I will enjoy it.

These are the parts of my head that I want to keep. That I want to put in my mouth, and savor.

The best parts.

I’ll eat them up until they’re gone and when they’re gone I will choose more parts that I want to keep.

There will always be more.

I am confident that there will always be more.