Dumb Smile

[Ben Z.]

She's a wobbling, jigglilng mass of misshapen pudge, tottering left and right, empty-eying me and wearing that dumb open smile. She has candy corn teeth and Little House hair. I see her every day at work. She turns up the radio when I turn it down. She hates dogs. She complains to our co-workers about her prying friends' endless demands for updates on her sex life, which forces me to fend off dismal and unwanted imaginings of her reproductive act. She breaths through her mouth. She's the girl Napoleon Dynamite, and she is waiting for me to make eye contact, but I'm pretending to get a text message instead.