I fell in love with the cashier at Trader Joe’s
On an unreasonably quiet October Sunday morning
As he scanned my blueberries and almonds
And told me that I’d made some good choices
And that I’d love them
And that he’d double-bag them for me just in case
Because he might’ve known that seeing my $4.99 box of blueberries
Scattered and rolling about the parking lot
Would break me entirely
And that I wouldn’t have been the first to mourn my produce
If tragedy struck the brown paper handle
Carrying the sliver of joy I’d just purchased
And that he’d gone through the trouble of protecting.
On an unreasonably quiet October Sunday morning
As he scanned my blueberries and almonds
And told me that I’d made some good choices
And that I’d love them
And that he’d double-bag them for me just in case
Because he might’ve known that seeing my $4.99 box of blueberries
Scattered and rolling about the parking lot
Would break me entirely
And that I wouldn’t have been the first to mourn my produce
If tragedy struck the brown paper handle
Carrying the sliver of joy I’d just purchased
And that he’d gone through the trouble of protecting.
It is not a silly thing, I think,
To have silently given a stranger my beating heart
On the basis of blueberries.
Kayla Spencer
Kayla, 27, is based in Utah, where she teaches 7th/8th-grade English Language Arts at a local charter school. She is a lifetime lover of the language arts, and now dedicates herself to the noble art of teaching teenagers that reading is not punishment, writing is not fruitless, and revision is not failure. When not engaged in mortal combat with said teenagers, she's found writing, rewriting, and re-rewriting her poetry and nonfiction pieces or deep between the pages of fantasy novels. She loves her mountains, her garden, her library, and Moses, her perfect cat. This is her first piece of published work.