Shopping - Nov. 12, 2025

  At least two times a week, he takes his metal horse into town,

            loads up the saddlebags and returns, as I rush to open the

            trunk and unburden his steed.

            I really can’t stand the glare of warehouse windows, the shaped

            and colored things stuffed in plastic, anything on a hanger,

            so many tiny boxes of confusion and those frosted doors

            on freezing aisles.  Oh, and I hate lines, any kind of lines.

            They all create in me, symptoms of fatigue, a touch of

            dizziness and the subtle panic of a spirit drowning.

            I will take my horse out to pick up things that I feel guilty

            asking him to, though even then at times, the horse and I will

            turn back around, he to his covered stable, me to my sofa,

            quickly collapsing into the comfort of a crushed cushion.

            I look at it this way – it’s better for him that he can enjoy his

            shopping gene, than I suffer when my immune system

            starts to fail, in the atmosphere of retail