Meltdown

Everyone in washed-out magazines, moldy books, old newspapers is always shaking hands, hugging, more. But for me, people only ever approach in white suits, thick gloves, plastic helmets, tanks on their backs with tubes to breathe through. Yet they still won’t shake my hand. Just because they’re scared of where I was born after the meltdown—that I was even born at all. My parents disappeared soon after, but I grew up comfortably alongside the animals—all of us talking without speaking the same language. If the white-suit people won’t shake my hand this time, well—I can have a meltdown too.