What God Thinks of All Us Shitheads
She thinks we can do better.
Although prevailing wisdom says we’re always
doing the best we can.
And God said,
“Who told you that?”
then snorted Fanta out her nose
in the convenience store parking lot
where she was looking for a light.
As luck would have it, I ran into her
again later, at the checkout in ShopRite.
She was still trying to decide between blue
or silver self-adhesive gem stones. A collage project.
“Neither one is really what I’m looking for,”
she sighed and smiled at me in that overfriendly way
like she was trying and failing to remember my name.
She asked me to hold her place a minute
while she ran and grabbed toilet paper.
“It’s always the thing you came in for
that goes right out of your head, isn’t it?”
She pointed at the guy in the express lane
with way more than ten items. “Jackass,” she mumbled.
“And he’s counting on all the rest of us shitheads
not to say anything.”
Although prevailing wisdom says we’re always
doing the best we can.
And God said,
“Who told you that?”
then snorted Fanta out her nose
in the convenience store parking lot
where she was looking for a light.
As luck would have it, I ran into her
again later, at the checkout in ShopRite.
She was still trying to decide between blue
or silver self-adhesive gem stones. A collage project.
“Neither one is really what I’m looking for,”
she sighed and smiled at me in that overfriendly way
like she was trying and failing to remember my name.
She asked me to hold her place a minute
while she ran and grabbed toilet paper.
“It’s always the thing you came in for
that goes right out of your head, isn’t it?”
She pointed at the guy in the express lane
with way more than ten items. “Jackass,” she mumbled.
“And he’s counting on all the rest of us shitheads
not to say anything.”
September 2025
Kathryn Petruccelli is a 2024 Pushcart & Best Small Fictions nominee. Her work has appeared most recently or is forthcoming in places like Fictive Dream, Fourth River, SweetLit, Cider Press Review, Switch, Rogue Agent, Emerge Literary Journal, and others. She teaches online, pay-what-you-can workshops. Kathryn currently lives in the west of Ireland with her family. More at kathrynpetruccelli.substack.com
Art: Ellen June Wright, Diptych #1306, #1509, watercolor on paper