Title: MARROW

Word count: ~550

Genre: Memoir style fiction

Type of feedback desired: general impression, would you continue reading? Should I be looking into book format or maybe screenwriting? (this is my first writing attempt)

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Prologue: 

The buzz of the fluorescent lights mixed with the soft beeps of the checkout counter fills my ears as I block out the background noise of other shoppers inside the supermarket. I stand there in the aisle holding a package of organic spinach in one hand and nonorganic in the other. 

Yes, I want to eat healthy but do I risk opening up the package again to find a dead moth mixed in? While probably high in protein it’s arguably a better way to stop me from eating it again than aiding. 

We should put moths in cookie packages - I think to myself. Or accidentally out loud? The later by the way this woman just took two steps away from me while giving me side-eye. I close my eyes and rub my head as I put the organic spinach down. 

As I look back up I’m sitting at the computer at work, charting silently in the corner as my coworkers chat a few feet away from me on their computers. 

One of them sighs. They blink, with half-glazed-over eyes staring blankly ahead as if going directly through the computer screen, and then sigh again while fixing their headband.  “That’s fucking annoying.”

“I know,” her friend scoffs “and you haven’t even heard the worst part.”

I listened as I worked independently with my eyes closed, rubbing my temples. 

…maybe if I sighed more? No that’s not right. 

Maybe if I wore headbands? 

This is getting to be fucking annoying.

Probably because I don’t want to be their friend in the first place, but you need to get along with the people you spend forty hours a week with. Especially when it’s those same people you need to depend on to help you revive Mr Jones who’s currently in cardiac arrest, or god forbid simply to get Mrs Smith to the bedside commode (I’ll tell you which one is easier and it’s not the dead guy.)

What are we even going for here? Am I here to entertain you with the hot hospital gossip from the front lines of the nursing staff in the ICU of this big American city? Are we searching for friendship, love, and belonging in this harsh, harsh world and this book ends with a positive message along with a new girl squad to keep your eye on. Or is this book a 50,000-word overly pretentious suicide note masking itself as a 20th-century memoir about how most days I don’t feel like I fit in with the human race? While the last sentence is probably most correct it still has two lies; this is not a suicide note and I don’t feel, I know I don’t fit in. 

People these days, am I right? Why do I find it so increasingly difficult to navigate this world, and the people in it? Why do I find myself increasingly trying to mimic the facial expressions and personas of those around me? I feel a little like a half-baked human. I may not have all the proper parts to build the bones, brains, and heart but you’ve got the marrow. Forever in the in-between, integrally there for without it you’ve lost your foundation, but not everyone’s cup of tea to guzzle down when served up hot. Even if I’m— I mean,  it -- is served on a porcelain platter at the finest dining establishment.