bustle of the grocery store
gives way to a kind of
quiet communion—
obscured faces and precious things
lining aisles and display cases,
boisterous kids and their
watchful, tight-lipped parents
contemplating both
the senseless damnation
of life in a pandemic and
what makes sense for this week's lunch.
Gradually, we become more
than customers; we react as war generals,
mature as statues, resolute as pack animals.
We move as one finely-tuned implement
of desire and love, humility
and imperfection.
In line, we watch one another
shyly but without guile,
blandly but courteously, the old
and the young, the overly-
cautious and the overly exhausted—all
the representatives of this world,
knowing we are here
for the same reason; we are going
home to different places;
like never before, we are aware
of the slender existence of one another.
