3 April

Day 3

A limbo

And is written that this shall come to pass -
an afterlife,
an after- something,
and it will not be negotiable

Here we are, you and I,
forced to stand apart at metres' distance
and it makes it hard to pass you all the goods
I gather in my arms
as you hold our basket

You said we should pretend
we didn't know each other.
Beneath the food and stuff,
we saw the nakedness of the shelves,
the bare bones of each aisle

And it shall come to pass,
this is a limbo-
walkways quite magnificent,
which we wander as if dreaming,
beneath the camera eye,
the whining of fluorescence

We hear the humming of the freezers,
the soft slipper on linoleum,
the cheery autochecker telling sinners,
'unknown item in the bagging area'