Christopher Faunce

Happiness & Co.

stops by my door at 7 am
seven college kids
in orange jumpsuits
I say early risers     
and they ask where’s the fridge?
they slap seventy cardboard boxes
on the vinyl floor
slice the packing tape
with knives scissored
to their wrists
they unfold plastic medical bags
reflecting orange bottles
the company logo
a smiling jack-o-lantern
plastered to the front
of each canister
next to the names
of substances
I can’t pronounce
then they whip open the fridge
& slide away my collection
of assorted meats
they line the walls
of my freezer
like a luminescent stadium
grandstands of dissolving
palindromes meant
to kill the monotony
label the days
Monday through Friday
they unload the pantry
turning my box of Cheerios
into little white discs
cut new openings
through the drywall
replace the last crumbs
of nutrition
with chemicals preventing
the normal flow
of contrition
and they say lifetime supply
ask me to sign
and I say wait wait wait
a box drops from the second level
rattling like a tambourine
against the foyer and I say
all I ordered was a friend

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Christopher Faunce is a writer from Pennsylvania. He graduated from Drexel University in 2023 with a degree in Civil Engineering. He won Drexel University's Creative Writing Award for Poetry in 2019. His poems have appeared in Philadelphia Stories and the Pennsylvania Poetry Society's Prize Poems anthology.