The Aisle

It's a Tuesday. You can always tell a Tuesday by the quality of its indifference. The supermarket is too bright. It always is. That particular fluorescent white that flattens everything — the oranges, the woman in the green coat, the man standing very still in front of the yoghurt. Not choosing. Just standing. You notice him the way you notice a frame that's slightly wrong. You came in for three things. You remember two of them. The music is a song you loved once, now drained of everything it used to mean, playing at a volume specifically calibrated to be impossible to ignore and impossible to actually hear. You find yourself mouthing the words. You stop when you notice. The woman in the green coat is reading the back of something she is never going to buy. This is the most human thing you will see all day. There's a child in the cereal aisle who has decided, with complete commitment, to sit down on the floor. Not crying. Not asking for anything. Just done. His mother keeps walking. She knows he'll follow. He does. You find the third thing you needed at the very end, in the last place you'd look, which is always exactly where it is. You pay. The person behind the counter doesn't look up. You don't need them to. Outside, the light has changed. Four seasons in one day in Paarl. It's raining now, lightly, the way rain arrives when it has somewhere else to be. You drove here for milk. You came back with something else entirely, and you can't name what it is. You never can.