March 8, 2022

I used to be a plastic bottle

reads the bag in my hand into which I’ll pile the purchases of whatever it is I’ll be
buying for dinner, on an afternoon a near-replica of the one a few days ago,
when I got the hankering for roast chicken and chocolate pudding and those
mandarins that are finally back in season. In the aisles, I walk robotically, my mind
on a million other things because…well, because whose isn’t? I reach, blankly,
into a space where an anemic mist drifts over a basket of limp herbs, then shuffle
downstream to where my go-to carbohydrates live. There are others here, too,
doing some version of this same dance while in another part of the world, a war
has shut off the pipes of certain cities, forcing its citizens to carry their water with them
in stiff, heavy bottles as they race to the exits, going who knows where, and for how long.