The Last Grocery Run
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The Poem
The Last Grocery Run
I came in from the other aisle and stopped.
This is what I do —stand still in the placeswhere people don’t expect to be watchedand watch themwith the complete attentionthat costs nothingand means everything.
She doesn’t know I’m here.She is standing beneath the sign that says SPECIALSreading a labelwith the focused attention of someonefor whom the difference between this and that still matters.
Sensible shoes. House dress. Set hair.She comes because coming is the whole job nowand she is doing it with everything she has.
One can of soup in the corner of the cart.Not two.Not a cart full of the dream of plenty —just the one thing,chosen, placed,settled in the cornerlike a small unremarkable answerto a question she has been askingsince the kitchen got quiet.
One can of soup
I have stood in enough aisles to knowthat is not poverty.That is precision.
The fluorescent light falls on herthe way light falls on everythingit has given up trying to flatter —equally, without preference,the same green-yellow on the cans,the linoleum, the house dress,the one can of soup —all of it equally unremarkableand completely specificand entirely irreplaceable.
I am the deer in the next aisle.I am always the deer in the next aisle —watching without being asked,witnessing without being invited,standing in the fluorescent lightof someone else’s ordinary Tuesdayand finding it the most important thingI have seen all week.
The deer in the next aisle
She doesn’t know.This is correct.This is how it works.
This is what I know about the last grocery run:it doesn’t know it’s the last one.That’s the whole mercy of it.
She is simply here.The soup is simply chosen.The sign says SPECIALSand she walked under it without looking upbecause she already knows what’s specialand it isn’t on the sign.
The cart moves slowly toward the door.I don’t follow.The deer never follows.The deer stands in the aisle a little longerin the silence of the ordinary extraordinary factof a life that showed up on a Tuesdaywith sensible shoesand came home with exactly what it needed.
The fluorescent light hums its one long note over the empty aisle.
One can of soup.
Going home.