Grocery List
What I need from the store
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.
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.

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.



Yes to all of these. Lately, there's a living lemon craving that needs to be fed daily.
This is wonderful, i love how you bring meaning to the ordinary by truly noticing each item.