#StoriesFromTheStoreFront - Episode #22

"Shakespearean Ode to the Retail Diva"

O thou ruddy-faced screamers.
Thou screeching, over-confident dominators of oxygen,
Time, and breath.
Air whistling through fang-pierced lips as you talk...talk...talk...
and punish.
Talk...talk...talk...
and punish again.

May your bags and baskets of effortful shopping remain as empty as your cruel hearts.
Thou snapping denizens of hell.
Such is my wish for thee - cruel and black and gleeful in its pointed revenge -

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that your red-eyed searches for garment, jewel and footwear
be forever promised...and then denied,
promised...and then denied,
leaving you yowling and crying, beating your money-crusted chests in despair.

"O, my tunic!" you cry. "O, wherefore art thou missing? How couldst thou be nonexistent throughout the kingdom - the entire kingdom! Even the Kingdom of the York of New! How? How couldst any soul but I yearn half as well for thee? None couldst have stolen thee away, when it is I alone who sheds tears of such fashioned and longing desire. None else could love thee half so well as I! Please, O please, look thou once more, and once more again!"

"Apologies, my Lady, my Lord," purr I, "but thy tunic, created with such love and in such predetermined quantity, hath been traded for gold and silver long hence. And naught is left to do but mourn, and mourn again, and turn our sight to other cloths and laces that may ease our aching hearts."

A sudden silence. An in-drawing of breath. A sucking of the air from a room wrought with shock. and loss. and regret. and none to blame but one's own sorrowful self.

"Thou wretch!" The wail of fury, emitting red-throated from thy mouth, assaults the ears. Thy sobs of anger, blame and rage rend the very air. "What hast thou done???" cry my Lady, my Lord. "It is not there and it must be thine error, thy unhelpfulness, thy unkindness that keeps my beribboned footwear from my parlor, empty now for want of a shoe. Thou harlot!" comes thine impassioned cry.

Of myself, I can do nothing.

​Not even may I turn my ear away from the painful and unearned accusations, but must of necessity limit myself to reactions shielded by muted silence; reactions of the bloody-toothed, mirthless grin, the undertoned swears, and the torn and hairless scalp of the serf whose emotional flesh reflects the scars of the whips...of the chains...of the Divas.

©2o19 Lori Kirstein