SmokeLong Quarterly

Honey, I can think of more reasons we shouldn’t leave this supermarket than reasons we should.

Honey, I know you think it’s inevitable that we go—that we’ve filled our cart, that your yogurt spoils, that my frozen burritos thaw, that your dog’s in the car, that the security guard started twirling her baton when I began construction on a house using boxes of instant mashed potatoes. But I need you to hear me, even if it’s the last thing you do for me, I need you to hear me because I’ve been considering this seriously since Aisle 2.

It was when I grabbed the apple juice.

You said we never drink apple juice.

That’s when I saw our empty refrigerator and the cupboards we barely risk filling anymore. Our stores are exhausted. We’re exhausted. It’s the opposite of an emergency which is still an emergency.

And it’s true, this thing about apple juice, but it’s also true that if you persist on leaving that we’ll live in a world where choosing a juice is even a consideration. Here, we’ll drink apple juice or we won’t. Here let’s toast with sparkling cider. Here, we’ll live as close as man has come to heaven.

That’s the best reason, but it’s not the only one.

Okay, maybe it’s the only one. But we won’t have to decide anything about juice or the dog’s heartworms or where we’re going. We aren’t going anywhere. That’s the point, as sharp as the corners on these tortilla chips.

Honey, have a tortilla chip.

Honey, some suns never set. Some suns are linear fluorescent lights so we won’t be kept from sleep by a darkened ceiling in which we can’t make out the future. Here, I won’t have to ask what it means that you bought so little food. Here is a box of your favorite childhood cereal. Here, I’ve used these cans of corn to build you a yoga studio.

I understand there are reasons to leave. The dog, the civil society, the security guard’s inconsiderate foot tapping. But consider what we risk: everything. We don’t know what’s going to happen when we’re home and all we’ve got are your organic bananas and my non-organic bananas and all of our possessions and all of our questions. There, it’s only a matter of time. There everything might go bad. There, there, please stop crying.

No one is saying we can pause life, just that maybe we can have a more beautiful one with round-the-clock access to the deli’s rotisserie chicken. Not that I can even see a clock from inside the plastic wrap solarium or that we’ll even need one.

Honey, here our days will not be days so they won’t be numbered.

Honey, hear me and we will never check out.

Honey, here, when you join me, we will be home.