Grit

There was the tiniest piece of grit in the salad, and she bit down on it every time: a boulder between her teeth, the way things feel big in the mouth. When she was done chewing she rolled it to the tip of her tongue, and then to a finger. A beautiful little thing, crystalline and perfectly itself. She wasn't used to washing salad. At the supermarket it came clean, bagged and anonymous, like a packet of crisps. She placed the grit back on her tongue, the first stone in a wall.