by J.M.C. Kane<\/p>\n
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The carousel turns in slow loops, plastic-wrapped souls swaying. A sun-bleached sign above the counter reminds us to remove everything from POCK TS. Clothes set to travel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
A woman tears the plastic from a suit and smells the collar. A man collects three shirts, already counting the days until he\u2019ll be back.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
My ticket\u2019s been in my wallet three months, coffee staining one edge. The numbers are still legible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
When I hand it over, the clerk checks the date, then me. She doesn\u2019t comment. Torsos whirr and swing until she halts the carousel with one practiced palm; it shudders, and she draws two things from the procession: a charcoal wool coat; the dress she wore to our daughter\u2019s wedding\u2014still blue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cThese are ready,\u201d she says\u2014the technical answer to no question asked.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Behind her, a side rack carries the unclaimed: a tablecloth from a party that lost its nerve, jackets whose owners moved during Summer, a tuxedo that learned to wait. There\u2019s another section in back, she once told me. Items gone dizzy from spinning and taken off the ride.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cForty-two fifty,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The price of ready.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The dress lifts a fraction in the conditioning current, as if remembering breath. The coat keeps the shape of her shoulders. A trick of the light, or polyethylene.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
I consider leaving them\u2014to orbit with the other silvery ghosts, to be gently forgotten by a room built for forgetting. I could leave the haunting here, let the carousel keep custody.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Instead, I pay. She lays the coat and dress across the counter and smooths the plastic the way nurses smooth sheets. The receipt prints a name in block letters that no longer seem to trust me; she checks the last name again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
At home, I\u2019ll hang them with the others. Still wrapped. Still ready.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The carousel starts turning again as the door closes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The haunting slips out behind me.
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J.M.C. Kane is the author of Quiet Brilliance: What Employers Miss About Neurodivergent Talent and How to See It<\/em> (CollectiveInk U.K.), a celebrated nonfiction work on cognitive patterning and inclusion in the workplace. Disabled, he writes from this learned experience as an ASD-1. His prose work has been published in more than a dozen literary journals and magazines. Kane admires compression the way some people admire tightrope walkers: from a safe distance, practicing only at home. He lives in New Orleans with his family in a house filled with paintings, dogs, and stories that unfold slowly.<\/p>\n
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