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She was a milquetoast kind of girl that never bothered to brush her hair except before bed. Being an anxious dreamer, she would wake up with snarls and snagglefooted clumps of what was still there upon her head and had not flown out the window yet. She would liken her mirror-self to the previous night’s nightmare, believing that she had not fully awoken yet.
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She would brush her teeth, though, in the morning, and attempt a smile at herself before always leaving the bathroom light on, which she would only realize once she got home some ten hours later. She would click her key in the door (three times) to make sure it was solidly shut.
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She worked at a place that had no name, or at least one that could be found in any actually identifying way. She waited on older men who would smack their newspapers away from themselves in order to push a plate of mistakenly ordered nonsense away from them, blaming her for being clumsy or stupid or cute.
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She would do this for seven hours, with barely a break of her legs, and then spend fifteen solid minutes nursing a cup of someone’s unwanted cappuccino just to feel fancy.
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After that, she would confirm her final tables and all but guarantee that she would be leaving late. There was always one crow that would request her, by beak more than name, and sit there waiting, embarrassing her with insults about her flat feet and footwear.
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She would amuse him with compliments about his hair coloring and his ability to woo a woman. He would brush these away with the way that older men might do to ugly women, who were still women to them anyway.
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Once he had left his heaping tip, the only reason she really still worked there, she would treat herself with a cab ride home. Living far from where she was, it would weigh heavily down in her pocket. She would find herself hand-thumbing the coins there, counting what was there by the girth of what was there.
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There were always enough bills that padded her buttocks, but the touching of the cold metal made her feel comforted, the slippery nodes of each disc something she had somehow earned more than just paper.
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It also helped her ignore the passing lights, the enormous brightness of a future she wasn’t able to stand. These would pass her and cause a shudder in her gut, a haze into a knowing shared abstraction that she had wanted for herself, many years ago, and yet now, slow-legged, fatigued, and a seen it all, she wondered what those lights were lighting up anymore, if anything at all but the young.
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Once home, turning the only light in the main room on and off (three times) she would then go to the bathroom, where she would notice the light still being on.
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She would turn the light off and lower herself down onto the toilet seat. She would cry quietly, in the dark, while shitting the waste of the day away.
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