Comma Separated
Photo by Chris Parri
The cream is congealed in the center of the coffee from yesterday.
The new coffee is bitter and too hot and
we are now out of cream. The window has always been too small and
the computer has always taken too long to turn on.
You have to click on things a few times and harder
when your boss walks by.
You hear someone cough down the hall.
There is a KitKat in a bowl down the same hall.
You decide to wait for later. The spreadsheet opens:
voter_registration.csv
Alson Kilmeade is a Republican from Custer County
with 2 kids and a ticket splitter score of 70 and his vote can one day be valuable
in a primary election way out there
but not all on his own.
He gets:
mail.
Laurine Jepson is Unaffiliated but her ideology score is
91.2 so she is as solidly progressive as progressive gets and that’s nice
and she should get involved with the environment.
She gets:
a phone call.
And you can see your name on the list too
and a score that you disagree with,
but you know who your voting for,
so best delete your row from the sheet
and save some bytes and paper and
psychic energy.
And you delete yourself and you sip
your new coffee which is less bitter now.
Outside someone is screaming at nothing down an alleyway.
There is a person sitting in the fire escape reading a magazine.
You click on something.
You wait and while you wait you read Twitter.
You have a photo on your wall you took of a landscape in Iceland.
You stare into it
and remember.
You click on Charlie Harrison-Cuomo from Riggins who is a
registered Democrat
and whose wife is marked as “LikelyDead”
and both he and she stopped voting the same year she got marked “LikelyDead”.
He gets:
a text.
Jerica Waitts is from your hometown
and you do not know her
but she is your age and has the same score as you and
changed her party registration a few times so she could vote in the Republican primary
just like you,
which feels like receiving a toxic kidney implant.
She gets:
mail.
You go get that KitKat.
You make a joke to one of your coworkers and they laugh.
Harrison Magnuson is from Rathdrum
and he’s joined a militia
and can no longer vote because he put a bomb outside a BLM office in Montana.
He gets:
deleted.
You refill your coffee and it is bitter again
and room temperature because someone unplugged the coffee maker to make toast.
You look out the window.
You receive an email from a politician.
You stare at the spreadsheet and add your name back to the list.
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Chris Parri is a photographer and writer originally from Eastern Idaho, now living in Boise. He is an editor and designer for Badlands and avidly unprofessional. You can follow his work on Instagram @wydahochris