More like a robin’s egg on a dusky sidewalk or husky carrots still sporting their green tassels
as they thud to linoleum. More like that, or the woman whose legs slid out from beneath her,
there, in the vegetable aisle, her husband crestfallen, shifting on his feet like an injured bird,
and, as if out of nowhere, a guy in a store-issued shirt offering a hand and scooter-cart. I
leaned in, asked, you okay? the woman’s eyes more gray than blue, hair more white than gray,
husband still adrift. She whispered my butt hurts as though she’d let slip a swear word or
secret. I tallied my own slips, a red down coat down to my calves, snow wheeling. I forget
what car my boyfriend drove when he dropped me off. Crossing to the house, I fell, hard,
on my ass, scrambled up, then walked on like nothing happened, like he wasn’t behind the
wheel the whole time, laughing.