Right is not the same as beautiful. Mindy Carpenter in the back room with the lights off, scrubbing through the selects from the week's clean-label shoot. Frame 0847 is the one. The window light did what it was supposed to do. The frame doesn't lie. Her phone lights up on the desk beside the keyboard. She does not pick it up right away. Something passes across her face in the dark that the monitor light catches and that no one is there to see. She turns the phone face down and goes back to the selects. On her way out she tells herself, in the private voice everyone keeps for the lies they need, that it was a good week and everything is fine. She drives home through the Dallas dark with the radio off. Featured: Mindy Carpenter, creative director. The Marfa Munchies is a daily fiction podcast about a food, beverage, and lifestyle division of a creative agency between Marfa and Dallas. New episodes weekday mornings. Follow the world at @marfamunchies on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky. . . . | ai-assisted fiction