I met a man on the street recently who claimed that everything was a metaphor.

“Is that right?” I had asked him. “Because I’m pretty sure that’s a knife you got there.”

It was late, so I handed him my wallet, and that son of a gun stabbed me anyway.

Nick Mendillo is a Rhode Island-based writer, artist, and educator. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in outlets including Had Journal, Novellum Magazine, and NINE. He’s also a professional cheeseburger chef.