I visit the grocery store
like the Indian woman in Peru
attends the cathedral.
Saying a few words over and over;
butter, bread, apples, butter bread apples.
I nod to the grandmothers muttering among roots.
Their carts tell stories: they eat little, they live alone.
Last week two women compared their cancers
matter-of-factly as I compare soups.
How do you reach that point of acceptance?
Life and death shoved in the same basket
and you with a calm face waiting at the checkout stand.
We must bless ourselves with peaches.
Pray to the eggplant, silent among her sisters ,
that the seeds will not be bitter on her tongue.
Confess our fears to the flesh of tomato:
we go forward only halfway ripened
dreaming of the deeper red.
~ from Everything Comes Next (Greenwillow Books, 2020)
~ from @MosabAbuToha
