From The Broken Face. Published by Harbour Publishing in 2018.
Here is an elderly lady asking the whereabouts of the liquid laundry soap. She has been waiting in line just to ask. Aisle 2, says the checkout girl. The elderly lady heads off toward Aisle 4. An elegant, tattered puppet, there she goes. Excuse me, I call out to her. It’s over that way. The checkout girl leaves her cash register, goes to the lady, guides her to the right aisle. The lady disappears down Aisle 2. Ah, getting old, says the man in line behind me. Yeah, adds the woman behind him. All of us waiting to pay for our groceries— Did you find everything you were looking for today? the checkout girl asks us in turn. We wait for the elderly lady, dividers in place, empty space readied on the conveyor for her soap. But where is she? The checkout girl leaves us again to go look. Where is she? Our eyes fix on the magazine racks, taking in who is engaged to whom (proposal made at a rented-out stadium), who has gotten married, who has “hooked up,” the photos of all the celebrities who have found what they were looking for. Is the elderly lady going down her aisle, on either side of her the lit-up rows of the many liquid laundry soaps that will make her clothes clean and bright, that will allow the dust to fall from her? The checkout girl hurries back to us, re-opens her cash register, dumbfounded, having found no one. For a moment before she picks up an item to scan, she pauses, and together we wait for this lady and are wedding guests awaiting a bride. I see our elderly one casting off her death clothes as she prepares for the ceremony, washing in the dazzle and flow of a stream clear as crystal, putting on new garments of light and going safely to her groom of light. Now, after we move dividers, fill spaces on the conveyor, utter club card numbers, insert debit cards, give and take bills, collect shiny, dark-edged coins tumbling out of a metal box into a cup— Do you need help out? No, I’m fine, thanks— we grab our groceries, say goodbye, we leave and go out into the broken aisles of the large parking lot, the streets, the sidewalks, each of us mortal again.