Made In China

It was night outside the double wide glass doors of the discount store where it smelled faintly of chemicals and leather. Beyond the thick walls housing many items of desire, the moon shone down, bright and brilliant in its glorious fullness.
The taste of mint chocolate ice cream still lingered on the back of her tongue as she wandered the aisles, looking at the assortment of pants and shirts and boots with an apathetic gaze that sometimes crossed over into brief curiosity. She rode the escalator up to the second floor and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrored pillars that stretched from the ceiling to the white tiled floor. 
Bright maroon lipstick over her lips, her wild mess of hair restrained by a furry white beret. Her oversized green pajama pants were tucked into the wide cuffs of suede boots. There she was, allowing the moon to travel above, for the night of blinking stars to pass unnoticed as she slowly walked through the two floors of metal racks and clear plastic hangers and more discounts than she could have ever wanted.
Every now and then she picked up something and held it for a while in her hands. These things were all cheap, her mind would immediately come up with several reasons to walk over to the registers, put them in a bag and take them home. There were lots of reasons: warmth, comfort, beauty, but the nagging thoughts kept coming in. 
She looked at the label of the sweater tights she had picked up off the back wall by the shoes: made in China.  She had heard a story on the radio seven hours before about the province of China where most of America’s cheap products came from. 
As she drove to the warehouse to drop off her leftover pastries and bread from the farmer’s market, she listened to the stories of young Chinese workers whose hands had became deformed after several years of repetitive movement. They made the clothes, the hangers, the phones, every item that surrounded her. They wore out the workers, till death or deformity set in, then got new younger ones to fill the positions. There were just that many people in China.
Hours later she wandered the store and felt the hands of the workers on every item. Her seven dollar tights were paid for by those distant unknown lives. She took the elevator up to the second floor where the household goods were waiting. She picked up a shoe organizer and looked on the bottom of the label: made in china.  She looked at a cutlery set that advertised itself as hand-crafted: made in china.
As she walked, looking at the brightly colored things, the shoes and jackets, the rugs and feather pillows, her face sunk more and more.  Her feet shuffled along the ground as she began to absorb the meaninglessness of almost every item. The manufactured need, the desire for more and more. 
She could feel it inside, she wanted that rug, those sweater tights. She could hear the voice in her head, she needed them to stay warm, some were even made of bamboo, was there really any harm?  Did her small almost meaningless purchase really make a difference when there were thousands of stores across America like this one? 
She could feel their hands, their eyes, their lost lives. 
She walked through the aisles, killing time until she could leave and drive to the house were her friend sat with sweet smelling long black hair and stories of explored language. She walked, sinking, changing as the story she had heard earlier moved through her. She could feel the pull of the American need, the hope that with this one new thing everything would be better and change, change forever, change until she needed one more thing- until she needed that other thing, until a new desire clung to reality just beyond her grasp.
Just as one orgasm was ending she would pause and think about the next time it might happen.  There was no rest for desire, for the want to fill it-  she could hear the stories of the people in her mind, the deformed hands, the jumpers off the factory roof, the utter desperation to end repetition.
All done so people like her could buy those cheap sweater socks and discounted shoes. It was for her and millions like her. She walked and walked, hurt by what she saw, but unable to leave.

Piece Of Paper

She looked out the window and saw a small scrap of paper blowing in the wind. It was a small yellow post-it note and the wind pushed it to the fence where it stayed tangled in the bunches of wild mustard plants and yellowed bits of grass that clung to the edges of the yard. A white moth-like butterfly flew over the wooden fence and disappeared into the eucalyptus grove that covered the hillside below. She stared at it, at the little trail of darting white that had faded into green and silver. Her house was warm, and because of the heat inside, she indulged in wearing only purple panties, that had lace along the edges, and a striped purple T-shirt. Her legs were bare except for the pink slippers keeping the bottom of her feet warm. She wanted to go outside and get the little bit of paper. She wondered what it said, where it had come from, who had dropped it. Would she find her own writing on the yellow paper? She wanted to go outside, but, although the sun was out, she could see by the rustling eucalyptus that it was windy, and wind, at least here at this elevation and so close to the sea, meant chill. She was not anxious to let the wind brush past her and strip from her the warmth she had accumulated over a night of sleeping under thick blankets and warmed by space heaters in every room. But what was on that paper? How come she didn’t just look right past it the moment she saw it? How come it didn’t just fade into the other images that she took in and let wash over her without a second thought? Was there something different about this piece of paper or was she just getting fixated on something, finding meaning or hidden purpose when there was nothing there. Maybe there would be nothing on it. But why couldn’t she just stop and go back to her computer and start writing? What kept her standing here at the window, so close to the cold wind that managed to find its way in despite the glass barrier? She thought about all the things she had lost over the years. The small chunk of Tibetan turquoise stolen from her bathroom. Her stacks of vinyl records. Her purple and white batik shirt that just went missing one day, the blue v-neck T-shirt that Suki had given to her before her parents sent her to a rehab facility in the mountains. Could this piece of paper be one of those things, a precious bit of her or someone else, something that was about to drift off into the bushes any moment, only it had stopped here for a brief second, waiting by the fence and held close by the mustard stalks.
Act now! This is the chance. Move and grab the curiosity in front of you. Act now, or it will disappear forever and you will always wonder, you will always stand by the window and wonder about that thing which called to you and you did not respond.