Young women give me back my heart
We were both walking down the aisle
(In a supermarket not a church)
I caught a glimpse of that sweet smile
Those brown eyes and black hair
I didn’t mean to stare
(but it was a volatile heart moment)
With you and me there
Passion spreads like a Molotov cocktail
Fires spread across my heart
The face of Venus, the space between us
Closes as I get closer to your grocery cart
I drop a note and get your attention
And say “Excuse me is this yours Miss”
On down the aisle and looking back at each other
(We are in a moment like this)
The note reads:
I am so glad you took my note
I wasn’t sure how to get it through
I am glad (though spontaneously)
(As summer winds gust) to have met you
As so many shoppers
consistently doing all manner of wrong
fail to return their trolleys
from whence they came to where they belong
it really irks when I leave work
drive my hybrid to the supermarket
circle the car park for what seems hours
and can't find a place to park it
the question may seem odd to some
and yet I have to ask it
why don't those self-same lazy people
do to it what they'd do with a shopping basket
I’m taking too long in here.
This cart I am trying to steer.
Is squealing around corners constantly.
There’s nothing except throwing groceries in endlessly.
The wet floor sign is laughing too hard.
I still need to buy a thank you card.
But words don’t exist in the confines of the store.
Just lines and scribbles galore!
Ribbons streaming from nowhere.
Like sadness from a tearful pear.
I could leave this store at any time.
But not without an angry lime.
Not without doing something odd.
Like catching bags of chips with a fishing rod.
Eating a pastry from a display.
Jumping around to avoid the fray.
I’m taking too long in this place.
Where I can feel the freezer section’s embrace.
The cold is not the only thing in me.
I wish everything was free.
Free like a smiling flower in the floral department.
Which is beautiful despite dismemberment.
I wish I was free too…
In this store with too many tears undue.
Five items in my shopping cart. Pull into
the line for fifteen items or less. One customer
ahead of me. Middle-aged woman with twenty items
arguing with the clerk. I have an appointment in half an hour.
“Lady, you have too many items!” If looks could kill, she’d be dead.
glanced at grocery list
bananas.....
nature's recipe
I look to my right
And there’s a bin of stuffed animals just like the one you bought me
I look to my left
And there’s your favorite flavor of ice cream
I look down
And I see your Nebraska sweatshirt I couldn’t let them throw away
So I think maybe
Just maybe
And I look up.
But there's no trace of you in the sky
Just the harsh grocery store lights
Reflecting off the tears streaming down my face.
stepping through the automatic doors
of a brand new grocery store
is a peek into another world
there’s no sandwich counter here, a tragedy—
but the frozen aisle in the center of the store
you have to take the bad with the good.
I must have dropped my unconscious mind
in the home & garden aisle yesterday
in a dream the intercom
crackles to life, tickling my ears
a familiar voice calls out
reminding me that I need
to water my houseplants soon
ten feet away
from the woman with sunken,
tired eyes, sifting through her coupons
a crumpled dollar bill
is flattened against a man’s
paint splattered, sun-stained jeans.
he walks out, pockets lined with possibility,
she walks out with a stooped back.
the automatic door slides open
for the both of them all the same.
The last page of my notebook was filled
today.
One last scratch on its timeless pages
reads:
watermelon radish
spicy water
dinosaur kale
dragonfruit (?)
pepitas
all scrawled in a quick, cursive hand
& I fell in love with her
all over again.
At any given moment, someone is stocking shelves
Putting the ping-pong balls next to the beer,
Ketchup next to the hot dog buns,
Strawberries next to the shortcake mixes.
In the parking lot cherry pits line the concrete gutters
All things in their proper place.
I’ve started seeing faces
of once strangers reappear with time
they don’t spare a smile for me
perhaps I’m still a stranger to them
the mother with a cart full of fresh
produce and peanuts, a daughter eating grapes
the steel-toed man at the sandwich
counter who eats absolutely no tomato
I can feel the warmth in the quilted
fabric of our lives, slowly woven together
a young man reaches for green tea
with lemon
but the shelf is empty and he sighs
it’s the tiny deaths in life
that prepare you for the big one
cracking like a bat
the summer storm
moves in quick
like ants to aisle nine
where chocolate chips
litter the floor
& the culprit runs away,
scared of the thunder
mosquito candles light the table on my porch
they sit alight in their little chrome saucers
each one trembles at an exhale of smoke,
dancing gracefully out of the way
this all seems incredibly natural to me.
I dance the same way when a mother
with four kids barrels down aisle three
racing to get to the cereal
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