Visa

This is how the hand off went. My fingers faintly so faintly held the plastic square, and then the Starbucks cashier applied her fingers faintly so faintly to the other side, and we each for a split second held the card like daisy chain or a banner or bridge between us that would be incorrect to break. Like both of us believed the other had cooties that we didn't want to contract. Like touching the plastic was somehow more embarrassing than touching the other's body. This is the pattern of these transactions. And sometimes in these transactions myself, the purchaser, and the cashier of whatever business will both grip the card so faintly that it will flip between our fingers like a fish, like we had slapped it, beat it around, and then it will clatter on the counter. But when it clatters, it is such a soft sound of the plastic, weighing some micro metered amount. There is no damage done. I imagine that others' transactions can be different. Yet mine are all like the card: commerce and purchases, faintly so faintly mediated by light plastic, and if the eagle in the corner catches it, oddly pretty in the light.