Roquefort Cheese

She placed the Roquefort cheese onto a cracker and slid it between her lips. It was a strong blue cheese, the kind your uncle might describe as smelly while filling up his plate.

She liked smelly things. Even, sometimes, the smell of her own farts, amazed that the body could create such disgusting emissions. She once read of a girl who sells her farts online — she puts each fart into a jar, seals it tight, and ships it through FedEx.

The internet is strange, she thinks, standing at her counter, blue cheese warming her gums. A place filled with people who will spend money on farts in jars and potatoes that look like Nicholas Cage and foot masks that peel off entire layers of your skin in one piece (an Amazon approved Hannibal Lecter).

She can admit she has considered purchasing said products. She is not immune to the lists of items that promise to make your skin baby-smooth, your hair long and silky, and your life suddenly not so achingly boring.

But usually, she holds off. She buys the fancy cheese instead. The cheese aged longer than she’s ever lived in one apartment. The spreadable, scoopable, want to lay your head down on it like a pillow kind of cheese. The strong, smelly, might tear through your bowels like a warrior kind of cheese.

She looks out her window to the apartment across the way. A man in a blue hoodie stands at his kitchen sink washing dishes and she waits for him to look up. She plans to raise her cheese and cracker in salute when his eyes meet hers and she saves the last bite in anticipation.

But he washes the last dish and the lights turn off and he is gone and there are no eyes and no salute. The darkened window becomes a reflection, her face at the ready.

She sticks the final bite into her mouth and breathes in its noxious fumes. She tries to remember something, something she promised she would not forget. She swallows, and the cheese is gone.