Picking an Off Bran
Irina adjusts her dark glasses as she steps into the dim aisle, a small precaution learned in places where faces are remembered too easily. A crooked portrait of Brezhnev hangs above the counter, the frame catching what little light the bulbs can manage. The state store holds its usual hush: a man’s cough moving through the shelves, an infant’s soft coo near the checkout, the low hum of fluorescent tubes that never fully wake. On the steel shelf, a single row of dull‑cream boxes waits, each one marked with the word for wheat in blocky script. Irina lifts the nearest box, feels the grain shift inside, and lowers it into her string bag. With nothing else on the shelf, the moment passes without hesitation. Outside, her step lightens—she reached the box before the shelf emptied, and that small luck means no return to the line at dawn. Walking home, she wonders how it must feel in America, the place people talk about, where shelves are said to stay full no matter the day.
Swiping up, our modern‑day Irina stands in the cereal aisle of an American supermarket, her gaze already darting across a jarring wall of colored boxes—neon blues, electric oranges, glossy portraits of perfect, golden flakes stacked higher than her reach. The overhead LEDs hum with a clinical brightness that sharpens every edge of the packaging. Her phone vibrates in her pocket, a sharp nudge. Lavender Mills is 10% off. Your favorite, Irina. It’s just below your elbow. She blinks at the screen, a small jolt running through her—how did it know that? Her eyes return to the shelf, and a familiar tug rises in her chest as she scans the rows again, thinking, now where’s that oat bran that’s supposed to be so healthy? Her gaze drifts lower, and a plain brown band catches her eye—90% Bran Flakes.
Irina’s eyes settle on the box, the number making her pause. Yesterday she’d skimmed a post about how FOMO keeps you scrolling for some fantasy hundred percent, chasing a version of perfect that never actually shows up. The memory slips in before she can brush it off. She reaches for the box, surprised by how natural the motion feels, and drops it into the cart. The small thud takes some of the edge out of the aisle; it stops feeling like something she has to figure out. As she heads toward the registers, her mind drifts to the job offer she keeps rewriting, the person she keeps waiting to feel sure about. As the doors slide open, Irina says to herself, “Ninety percent is a hundred percent right.”
