On the list, knockoff sour cream and onion chips that taste like cardboard, unlike Lays. Cheap sardines, knockoff Diet Pepsi. Store-brand beans. A glance at fish filets and steaks that radiate raw beauty. A hunt through my wallet, through every pocket, only to produce that same twenty, ripped and crumpled.

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories, “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” “Tales From A Communion Line,” and “Community Time,” have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. His work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and Ariel Chart, among others.