Grocery List

What I need from the store

Photo by Han Lahandoe on Unsplash

I wrote it on the back of a receipt,

last week’s groceries, already eaten,

already forgotten,

the way we forget most of the things

that kept us alive.

Lemons,

which are just sunlight

that learned to be honest.

Sour and bright and necessary.

The kind of thing you don’t want

until suddenly

it’s the only thing that makes sense.

Salt,

because the body already knows

what it’s made of,

and sometimes you just need

to be reminded.

Butter,

which is the softest thing in the kitchen

and also the most reliable,

always there,

always willing

to make something better

than it was before.

Tea, the loose kind,

the kind you have to work for a little,

the kind that asks you to slow down

long enough to watch the water change,

how it goes from clear

to the color of an old photograph

of somewhere you’ve never been

but somehow recognize.

Figs, if they have them.

They probably won’t.

But the asking is its own kind of hope,

and I have learned

to carry hope in small containers.

Photo by Auguste A on Unsplash

Matches.

Not for anything dramatic.

Just candles.

Just the small insistence

that even on the darkest evenings

a person can make light

with a single dry strike.

Photo by Shakib Uzzaman on Unsplash

And bread,

the kind still warm from the oven,

the kind that makes the whole car smell

like someone is waiting for you,

like someone knew

exactly when you’d be coming home.

I fold the list

and somewhere between the cold air

and the automatic doors

it comes to me quietly,

(the way true things do)

that I never once wrote down what I was really here for.

Which is this:

the particular weight of choosing,

the way a stranger’s cart

passes close enough to touch,

this whole brief ordinary life

laid out in aisles,

lit and waiting,

like it was arranged

just before I walked in.

Like someone expected me.

Like there was always going to be enough.

by Betsy Johnson, M.Ed.

© 2026 Betsy Johnson. All rights reserved.