bread-basket. i can think of nothing else but bread-basket. words come down to me in pneumatic tubes, little slips of paper straight to my desk carried in puce-colored canisters with numbers and letters i don’t understand. they tasked me with opening the canisters, removing the words printed inside on little slips of paper and reading them directly into the camera perched on my left. the camera is always on, you see, from the moment i arrive at my desk in the morning to the moment i stand to leave. i don't know if anyone is watching me or if i am being recorded. i crouch in a little room with no windows or ventilation. they print the words in black ink, in a 14pt. times new roman font. they come crashing through the tubes, i recite them into the camera, careful to make sure the boom mic picks up my voice, and then i put the word back into the canister and send it away again. this has been my job for twenty-seven years.

one day i snuck in a notebook and when words appeared i wrote them down in soft pencil, and after i'd crawled home, i would study them into the early hours of the morning. on a slow day there were dozens of words, on a busy day, hundreds. but they'd no apparent connection, no purpose. some words were perfectly plain (lane). some were long and hard to say (incomprehensibilities). so despite my attempts record them all and divine the order, i never could. no matter how many i wrote down, more always came to overwhelm the rest.

but then something strange happened the wednesday before last. at 2:18pm, a canister arrived at my desk. but instead of the standard word printed in black ink, in a 14pt. times new roman font, it was printed in calibri, in a simple 10 pt. font, red in color and underlined: bread-basket. and what a sight it was! what on earth could it mean?! what was it trying to tell me? i stood instantly from my seat, a panic gripping my chest. i unbuttoned the collar on my dress shirt and yanked my tie from my face. i sweated into my pits and the room spun around me. certainly it was a message, a test of some kind. i couldn’t fail it now. and so back into the chair i collapsed and, hands trembling, spoke the word into the camera: bread-basket. it sat like buttery mashed potatoes in my mouth, the lips, the tongue, coordinated in symphonic purpose. brɛd bæskət. i let pieces of it dribble from my lips. i fell backward into myself. i lost track of time.

i trembled and slid the word back into its canister and the tubes rushed it away. i waited there for an hour, listening for the slurping suction and tiny pop that preceded each new delivery. but when the next one arrived, it bore the standard black ink and 14pt. times new roman font. as did the next. and the next. and the one after that. twenty-seven years with not a single divergence from standard protocol, whatever could it have meant? was it a gift, something i might always remember? to commemorate the occasion, i ran to my local tattoo parlor and watched in the mirror as bread-basket was seared directly over my heart, the red ink bleeding down my chest. i longed for bread-basket. i whispered it in my sleep and after a hot morning shower, i'd scribble it out in full capital letters on the foggy bathroom mirror.

the good thing is, i no longer try to write or find order in the other words. they clunk on down the tubes and off they go again. although i do not hate or feel resentment toward them, they are no bread-basket. and though i cannot be certain that bread-basket will ever come again, i draw strength and hope from the fact that it came at least once. but once, and i was there to read it.