Self-Portrait as Grocery Store
Kat Neal

All of my thoughts are buy-one-get-one-
free, a cart piled with ten tubs of pancake

mix and I don’t eat breakfast most of the
time. Check-out lanes clogged up to capacity,

with screaming child, frantic mother, absent
father, there are too many families in here.

Someone calls to me from the break-room,
barely more than a whisper but I don’t hear

over this wailing little girl, PLEASE I WANT
THEM, crying abandonment as she’s denied

fruit snacks, and that’s how it is, huh? Stuck
in the kiddie seat while mom’s too far away

checking the eggs, lifting each one to her eye
(they’re all broken but her face won’t show that).

Being an entire family unit wrapped into one,
being girl-woman-child-mother-man-baby-father,

a short-staffed body, trying to scrub egg whites
from the ceilings while the floors are too clean,

screeching of squeaky shoes marching to the
frozen aisle, and lights blazing into the night.