"Store" by Liana Cusmano

You are at the grocery store because you have decided

that you are going to wake up every morning

and every morning you will take your medication

and so every morning you will need to eat.

You have convinced yourself that

your body will not collapse under the weight

of everything that has happened to you

not if you take proper care of it

not if you stop carving it away piece by piece.

You have a sneaking suspicion that

your life is a quirky mistake

that somebody made on purpose.

You take this hypothesis with a grain of salt.

Under the harsh glare of the white lights

you are walking on eggshells inside yourself

while the rising prices ask—

why buy food if you’re just going to eat it

and then have to buy more?

Why squander the fruits of your starving artist’s labour

on undeserving vegetables?

Why fight the craving for a black hole deep enough

to crush and grind you down to barely there?

Your parents and their parents before them

have passed down all the ingredients you need

to be someone who has a panic attack

in front of the frozen yogurt

you have inherited all the elements required to become

a melted puddle on a hospital room floor.

You only ever buy the same brands

of ketchup and peanut butter that you ate growing up

because the sugarcoated memories that they trigger

are familiar.

You remind yourself that many of our relationships

are just copies of copies of the ones we had

when we were younger.

And you know that the seeds of your own genealogy

will have mushroomed beyond your control

the next time you start sobbing for no reason

alone on public transit

the next time you feel the need to scald your own skin.

The last time you were here

you cried over spilt milk in the dairy aisle because maybe

the half-life of heartbreak is just one whole clichéd lifetime.

You’re scanning the shelves for a tea that will put you to sleep

when you vaguely remember what it’s like to drift off

without torment

to wake up

without nightmares.

The man on the phone next to you has got white toast

acne products

and fabric softener in his cart

all on sale.

And when you hear him say

Don’t worry, I’ll come and get you,

you remember how those words cooled the panic

of every flat tire

and every last night bus that never came.

The granola bars and animal crackers on the shelves

evoke the sheer magnitude of friendships

that can last all the way from,

Do you need to copy my math homework? to

What time is the funeral?

At the end of the frozen foods aisle

not far from the dinosaur chicken nuggets

 you see a small child turning in panicked circles

their terror boiling over

streaming down their face.

They hold your hand all the way to the front of the store,

their name is a whisper in your ear

and then an echo over the PA system

and the two of you sit in a manager’s office

waiting to reap what the announcement has sown.

The kid’s collar is wrinkled

their Velcro sneakers are low-hanging fruit over the floor.

Their response to How old are you?

is only a little more than a handful of raised fingers.

One of them wilts towards the floor

and reminds you of the spinach you put back on the shelf

in the discount section.

You stack all your cans of beans and chickpeas and lentils

into towers on the floor

and when the child’s parent appears in the doorway

the two of you are bowling apples and oranges

and talking about ice cream sandwiches.

You come home to your empty fridge

and put all the groceries away.

You crumble a cookie in your fist

just because you can

and then put the pieces under your tongue.

You can’t remember the last time

you were happy for no reason

only all of the moments

you were sad without explanation.

You remember how good it can feel

to find your way back to yourself

after you have been lost.

You remember that your being here

is a decision that you are going to make

 repeatedly, on purpose.

It is not quite so hard to swallow.

Writer, poet, and filmmaker Liana Cusmano (aka Luca/BiCurious George) is a three-time Montreal Slam Champion and runner up in the 2019 Canadian Individual Poetry Slam Championship. Their first novel, Catch & Release (2022) was published by Guernica Editions. They were a 2022 finalist for the QWF Spoken Word Prize and winner of the 2024 Society Pages Poetry Contest.