I’m sorry for the wait on your salad,
things are really crazy in the kitchen right now—
Sandi, one of my coworkers, turned into a horse.
She was filling a monkey bowl with salsa,
and to this point,
everything about her had been extremely normal.
One time she walked out during her shift,
because there was just too much shit going on,
and one time she told me, in passing,
that her mom wouldn’t be happy if she knew she worked Sundays,
and another time I saw her stab her finger with the lemon wedger.
Real blood.
Sandi turned into a horse, and now we don’t know what to do
and neither does the horse, so please be patient with us.
It was so sudden, there was no gradual turning of her arms to hooves—
She was filling salsa and then she was a horse,
simple as that.
There was a look of confusion in the horse’s eyes at first,
as though it was realizing it was a horse.
Then it started doing horse things, and that’s why you heard all the clashing
and the screaming and crying.
And my manager is doing everything he can to lead the horse out of the kitchen,
but he really wasn’t qualified for this—
none of us are.
And somewhere, I imagine, Sandi’s mom is watching TV with a bible by her nightstand,
Dr. Phil maybe.
She’s got a glass of water and she’s already halfway asleep.
I suppose she won’t be very happy
when she finds out Sandi turned into a horse.
Teddy Griffith is a restaurant worker who lives in the mountains of North Carolina. His writing has been in Words & Sports, Cowboy Jamboree, and some other places.
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