By Yash Seyedbagheri

I can’t pay my credit card because I used it to subsist on bare green TV dinners and Lays.

I can’t bring my bank account positive, because I got fired. No thank yous or false promises. Just talk of metrics and severance. Severance, a word that evoked someone’s head rolling around, like an unloved soccer ball.

 But before that, I needed to drink champagne, savor the verve, and feel like a royal. I drank nightly. And before that I needed sushi and lobster, after that first demotion. Not up to speed, they said. 

Now overdraft fees and bounced checks prey on me. Interest rates devour.

 I can’t explain, because no one wants explanations unless they involve being run over, fighting robbers, or losing a kidney. Even though once upon a time I marked calendars with colored highlighters, set clocks half an hour fast, and thought data crunching was sexy.

And I can’t speak contrition. Contrition’s insufficient. No kidneys lost.

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Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories, “Soon,”  “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,”  “Tales From A Communion Line,” and “Community Time,” have been nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work  has been published in  SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.