RH2: RETAIL NEVER SLEEPS > POETRY
THREE STARS– I was lonely; I wanted people doing people things, not the grandiose proposals of romance films but the everyday mundanities and humiliations, you know what I mean: the accidental sunflower seed spill in the bulk section, seeing the one person I didn’t want to see, not like this. And really, it sounded almost right: the beep beep of a scanner, a child’s high-pitched whine, laughter from somewhere in the far aisles. I heard a woman in the foreground with a low, impatient voice: come on.
But I noticed that it was repeating on a minute loop, and once I heard it, I couldn’t unhear it. Every minute, the same garbled announcement over the loudspeaker: was it apples to aisle seven? The same rhythm of shopping-cart squeaks and collisions, the same child calling out for his mother. God, why won’t she pick him up? The annoyed woman again: come on.
Obviously, she has somewhere to be. She can’t stay here in this loop, waiting endlessly for the cashier who rings up the same organic baby carrots, the same bouquet of dyed carnations. But it keeps happening: ahead of me, a dish slams against another dish. The woman continues to wait. Someone laughs in an aisle far, far, away.
Emily Adams-Aucoin is a writer whose poetry has been published in Electric Literature’s “The Commuter,” Meridian, and Colorado Review, among other publications. Emily currently lives in South Louisiana, and you can find her on social media @emilyapoetry.