a kid goes into 7/11 to buy milk at like 2 in the morning because he just got this cereal with pieces of dried strawberries in it that he likes more than he would probably tell anyone, and so he walks into the brightly lit room and grabs a gallon jug of 2 percent and because he’s kind of rushing he opens the glass door quickly and pulls the milk out really fast and sort of accidentally throws the jug on the floor as he’s pulling it out because he doesn’t grab it strong enough and when it hits the floor, the plastic cracks underneath the cap and milk starts pouring out a little and he has a tiny inner panic and goes to put it back not because he doesn’t want broken milk but because he doesn’t want the older cashier with the loud deep voice from bangladesh or somewhere to see that he broke it which he knows that’s stupid and wrong and he’ll probably be angry at himself later when he thinks about it but he knows he just can’t do that like he can’t conceive of dealing with that so he goes to put it back and he pulls out another milk jug and drops that too and it’s way worse and there’s a big crack in the side of the jug as long as his hand and now there’s a puddle of milk all around his shoes which he remembers will smell like rotten milk later so he starts feeling like his shoes are currently covered in rotten milk and the jug is still gushing even though he’s plugged it with his hand which is now soaked in milk and it’s slowly dripping in a line down his arm and getting on his sleeve and in his sleeve so he’s got milk all on him and he’s trying to not make any noise so the cashier doesn’t look up from the little non-smart phone that he’s holding close to his big masculine belly and looking at with bifocals and this kid is really kind of panicking now because he doesn’t know what to do with all this milk so he just leaves the jug of milk which has now emptied to below the crack standing on the floor in the puddle and goes to pay for a third jug of milk and walks away from the ovular puddle as it spreads out like a big white amoeba across the white and red tiled floor and the light is white and his hands are pale white and he’s looking down at them as he’s handing faded green money to hairy dark brown hands and even though he’s nervous about being there when the cashier sees that the milk is on the floor and puts two and two together to figure out that he not only spilled the milk on the floor but left it there and pretended like he was completely unaware of it which is way worse than finding out that he spilled milk on the floor which he’s already really nervous about. even though he’s nervous about that, he looks at the color of his white hands in the lurid white light of this store and the darker hands in front of him and the primary colors of advertisements and the white and red tiles and even the white liquid spreading slowly across the floor and it all comes together into something like a really incredible painting of light and texture and colors and even though he can’t fully digest it now, he’ll think about that image later on when he’s sitting in his kitchen eating his cereal at 3 in the morning and think of how incredibly beautiful it was.