I was the one who took the fallen dresses, the designer pants
and shirts hanging or lying in clumps on the benches inside 

the large dressing room, took them back out to the racks so 
another woman could try them. I was the one who cleaned 

up the racks, rearranged the sizes where they should go. 
It was a comfort to be amongst all those beautiful silks,

rayons, plaids, stripes. Trying to make some sense out of
childhood, to wear the questions I hoped clothes could answer.

there was nothing more to lose until 
there was. It was one thing after another, 
the spring we hardly could notice
although it went on without a second thought.
It was the fabric of the human world unraveled. 
No haircuts, no friends around the table,
no doctor visits. It was going to work, buying,
selling, all lost, or morphed into sitting
in front of our machines of connection.
It was grace, had we lost her or did she watch
from her balcony as the world pitched 
into a chasm of mystery and gloom? Was she 
a woman, or had she shapeshifted into a dream?  
A tulip or a violet open in the sun? Some 
of us knew they could find her, knew the places
she liked to hang out, while others kept trying
for a glimpse, like looking for someone 
or something that had died. But she hadn’t.
She might have been obscured in grief, 
as she could pick it up on the wind, in the sun
or stars. She might have been angry, 
and had to hide with the flowers she crushed 
in her fists. Maybe she was too tired 
or heartsick herself for a time. 
Maybe she was lost somewhere until
she could find her way. The way. The way
back from a disaster.

The grocery store gave us seven bananas we didn’t ask for
in our curbside pickup bag. Our next door neighbor said
he’d take three off our hands for his trip tomorrow to Utah.

His wife with dementia gone just a week. The other three are going 
to our neighbor on the other side, who gave up sugar but not fruit, 
so God would let her daughter keep the newly adopted baby 

during the trial period. And we’re keeping one. Banana. The New York 
Times asks if we have been hungry and the answer is no. But I wish 
I could find more bananas for all the hungry people, children 

and their parents. Then I would be doing more than writing about it. 
About how this pandemic is starving some of us. I would figure out 
a way to feed the people who are ravenous, give them food trucks, 

restaurants, unlimited curbside pickups. Because it’s not okay
to be famished, to be craving security when there isn’t so much, 
people dying as usual and more than usual.  At least the baby 
is going to stay where she is. At least one less tragedy to face.