The Supermarket
When I read the cashier’s name tag — Penelope —
I think: she must be so lonely. She scans my almond butter,
and I imagine her response: I’m not your cliché.
Avocados wobble like Russian nesting
dolls across the conveyer belt,
along with chia seeds and refried beans.
When she grabs my oranges in their green plastic
netting with her knotted hands, does she think of weaving?
Some stitches let the light through,
others are wound so tightly they cut
her circulation off where she’s bitten her nails
down to the cuticle. There’s something about the slow sweep
of her arm: how easily she brushes away time,
and grief, slowly, deliberately, as if she has nowhere to be.
Teach me patience, I want to say,
but instead, I grab salted caramels and blurt out
that my mother knit my sweater during quarantine
when I couldn’t see her for over a year. I puff up my chest
so she can see the yellow flecks nestled in the rough
navy skeins. She smiles politely and asks: Lacinato kale?
waving the bitter greens in front of me.
I nod, and she inputs a string of numbers.
All my life, I’ve wanted easy answers;
this stranger will spend a lifetime safeguarding them.