#human spaces

Smiling faces

A lovely ache

At the Corner Store A poem by Alison Luterman

It was a new old man behind the counter, skinny, brown and eager. He greeted me like a long lost daughter, as if we both came from the same world, someplace warmer and more gracious than this cold city.

I was thirsty and alone. Sick at heart, grief-soiled and his face lit up as if I were his prodigal daughter

returning, coming back to the freezer bins in front of the register which were still and always filled with the same old Cable Car ice-cream sandwiches and cheap frozen greens. Back to the knobs of beef and packages of hotdogs, these familiar shelves strung with potato chips and corn chips, stacked-up beer boxes and immortal Jim Beam.

I lumbered to the case and bought my precious bottled water and he returned my change, beaming as if I were the bright new buds on the just-bursting-open cherry trees, as if I were everything beautiful struggling to grow, and he was blessing me as he handed me my dime

over the dirty counter and the plastic tub of red licorice whips.

This old man who didn’t speak English beamed out love to me in the iron week after my mother’s death so that when I emerged from his store

my whole cockeyed life— what a beautiful failure!— glowed gold like a sunset after rain.

Frustrated city dogs were yelping in their yards, mad with passion behind their chain-linked fences, and in the driveway of a peeling-paint house a woman and a girl danced to contagious reggae.

Praise Allah! Jah! The Buddha! Kwan Yin, Jesus, Mary and even jealous old Jehovah!