It's Still Life

The Small Matter at the Aire de la Clermont-Ferrand Rest Stop

The cubicle door springs open with a bang, and a woman emerges; our eyes meet in a flash of mutually accusatory side-eye, wads of loo roll fill both of her hands.

“French toilets,” she drawls with a weary little heaven-tilt of the head, the Texan in her vowels smoothing the words, “you just never know if you’ll be stranded in there or not.”

I smile, glancing down at the icy water still spilling over my hands, and decide silence is the wiser path — “Yeah, s’pose so,” … my internal dialogue kicks a fervent f-bomb that I’ve let slip even that much.

“Oh, I hear an American accent,” she says, pivoting towards me, “Where y’all from?”

“London,” I reply, my tone flat and final.

I don’t ask where she’s from — I don’t care — she’s pilfering enough paper to blot France clean off the map.

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Stories including the word Fill.   Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Images are copyright and not to used without permission, which I willingly give when asked, and when not for commercial use. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2025.