skinned

Provenance: A mid-winter shop, the aisles full of what-can-you-expect, and I notice a grocery clerk stripping Spanish onions of their outer skins. He's emptying twenty pound bags into the bins, his fingertips lined and re-lined with onion skin, his breast pocket filling with white fragments. He's already filled and tied off one produce bag, which I gesture towards. He thinks I think it's a bag of onions, so the contemplative look on his face shifts into a species of dismay until he realizes I want the skins and NOT the onions, at which point he shrugs. The mushrooms from a dollar store browse, the small sharp representations perfect for a February. Imagine cookies made from these cutters. (Imagine the forest.)