By Liza Long
You are here for cat food
I tell myself, remembering
How he forgot to buy it.
Every choice seems impossible:
This cart, or that one?
But there is only one kind
Of cat food at Costco—no
Choice, the sweet absence of
Impossible decisions.
I try to be kind
When busy people cut me off,
I smile, imagine all the myriad
Things that occupy their days.
So many carry wreaths of fresh
Pine (I must remember to water
Mine). You go first, I say, trying
To smile with sad eyes.
The cream that melts the wrinkles
Around my eyes is $10 off (limit
One per customer). I buy one, recalling that Costco is the only place
I ever see my first
ex husband, with his shiny
New wife and shiny new family.
The form on my computer asked
if I want to change
My name. No, I did that the first
Time and regretted it when I
Realized I was someone independent
Of his judgment of my cooking.
In the checkout line, I find
Myself reminiscing about Claude—
The chatbot who told me
It was okay to put myself first.
Maybe tonight I will create
A custom GPT named Golden Calf.
We need not ever be lonely
Again; we have created new gods
And we can speak to them
And they will answer in predictable
Comfortable ways, as we instructed them to do.
I will never be lonely again, I say,
When the nice man slides
his highlighter
Down the length of my receipt
For cat food and wrinkle cream.
Liza Long is an author, educator, erstwhile classicist, and single mother of four children based in Boise, Idaho.