to the girl buying a single box of tampons at the drug store. sincerely, the woman in front of you buying milk.

a poem, which I eventually get to

On Saturday morning I made coffee but when I went for the milk, it was gone. Carton as chimney in recycling bin.

Most of the house was still sleeping but I called out to the only one besides me who was awake.

"I have to go out and get milk! Be right back!”

My son jokes that the only time I do a full grocery shop is when we’re out of milk and eggs and that’s sort of true. I can make it work with what we have. Replace fresh vegetables with a bag of frozen spinach. Macgyver a pasta dish with a bruised bell pepper and some goat cheese. Turn toast into pizza. I rise to this challenge.

“Limitations often make us more creative,” I insist. “When you have fewer choices you can learn to make better ones.”

That, and I refuse to grocery shop more than once a week.

So, in the morning, when there’s no milk of any kind, I’m always gonna be out the door, pajama-clad and no-bra-barefoot-until-I-realize-I-forgot-my-shoes. Smudged sunglasses over unconcealed eyes. A woman on a mother fucking mission...

…For milk.

It’s always the milk.

All I want, all I need — is the milk.

(When I die, they’ll say: Here lies Mom. She went out one last time to get milk.)

There is a certain vibe to drug stores in the morning and yeah I have a thing for them. I can’t explain it, except to say that there is something strangely comforting to me about a cosmetic section when you walk through the door. And cigarettes behind the counter when you check out.

I have written about this before — the feeling of needing something and knowing where to get it. And then returning to the same place. Over and over. Not to shop, but to attend to a need.

Q. What does twenty years of attending to needs look like?

A. It looks like many trips.

It looks like getting in line with one thing. It looks like never picking up a basket. It looks like me at 8am on a Saturday, marching across the parking lot in a pajama shirt and a one-track mind.

The drug store is the only place I can think of where I come in knowing exactly what I need. It’s the only place I can think of where WANTS and NEEDS are the same thing.

There is a young woman I notice as I’m coming in — stepping out of the passenger side of what appears to be her boyfriend’s car. She looks like me just twenty years younger. Same oversized sunglasses and boots. No bra. I hold the door open for her and she pushes past me with the same purpose I have. Like she too is determined to weaken her coffee with hot milk.

Behind us, an engine idles. A car parked perpendicular, taking up two handicapped spots.

Our trails fork quickly upon entering the store. She hooks a Louie down the feminine care aisle as I march toward the back, arms folded over my chest as not to free too much nipple in front of the morning re-stock guy. There are way more people in the store than usual — at least at this time — and I’m suddenly self-conscious about my night shirt as dress situation, quickly grab my milk from the back-corner fridge and get in line.

The young woman gets in line soon after me. She clutches a box of tampons to her chest the same way I cradle my milk. The drug store is the only place I can think of where wants and needs are the same thing.

We are the only two women in what has become a relatively long line. We are also the only two people who are here to purchase single items.

We are Milk and Blood bookending a generation of women drug-store-gatherers. We are two women on the run, in different phases of getaway cars.

I pay for my milk, no bag, and as I’m leaving the store I hear her echo for the checker to do the same.

“I don’t need a bag, either.”

I wink at her from behind smudged sunglasses. Tell her, without words, about the times, years ago, when I, too, woke up bleeding. Often at a lover’s house without my car. How I would buy something else as camouflage in the check-out line. A magazine or a pack of spearmint gum. Ask for a bag. It took me many years not to care what a stranger at a drug store might think about my selected absorbency.

I’m halfway across the parking lot when I hear the guy in the idling car ask the girl what took her so long. To get the thing she wanted. To get the thing she needed. To get the thing that keeps her from bleeding all over his car.

What took you so long? I hear him say over and over as I climb into my car with my milk.

I watch them in my side-mirror as they reverse and drive away. Try to catch her eye at the stop light. (Now it’s me who’s turning left.)

What took you so long.

I think about her all morning. Of who I used to be before we started running out of milk.

“Limitations often make us more creative,” I want to tell her. “When you have fewer choices you can learn to make better ones.”

For the rest of the day I will wonder where she is and what she’s doing. I will think about the young man (old boy?) in the idling car and how quickly she’ll forget him when she realizes she deserves more. How relieved I am to drive myself places — wonder if maybe the need to do that now — at this point in my life — outweighs my want for someone with me when I do.

And then, later that afternoon, I will return to the same store for paper towels and scotch tape. Things I knew we needed when I went to get the milk but could not possibly prioritize.

Not at 8am.

Wouldn’t dare.

Take your time.

Because some things can wait and some things can’t and my love language is getting in line with one thing even when I know I’ll have to come back later for the rest.

And how annoying that must be for the people who count on me for everything.

So many people count on me for everything.

But here’s the thing. When it all feels like too much, you have to start somewhere.

And for me it’s the milk.

All of this to say, that I wrote the following poem on my driveway Saturday morning upon returning from the store.

Dear girl buying a single box of a tampons in the drug store,

one day you’ll be your own getaway car

and it will remind you of all that you’ve lost

and what you don’t miss

now that you’re the woman in line buying milk

to put in your coffee

before everyone wakes up.

“what took you so long?”

take

your

time.