From where I stand, your shopping cart is a single bright ribbon threaded through one long day, and it is one of the loveliest shapes you make.
I see the whole of it at once: the alarm ringing while it is still dark, the coffee gone cold beside the door, the way your shoulders set themselves like a small animal deciding to be brave. I see you in the parking lot that is a field of glass and breath.
I see your hand close around the box you came for, the same hand that at four years old closed around a spoon in your grandmother's kitchen, the same grip exactly, that particular fold of thumb over knuckle you will keep until your final morning. You do not know your hands have always held things this way.
I do. It is one of the truest things about you.
You are worried, right now, reading this, that the wanting is a little foolish. The doorbusters, the countdown, the strangers pressed shoulder to shoulder all reaching for the same discounted warmth. But I cannot see the sadness you fear is in it. I only see the reaching. You, and the person beside you, and the cashier whose feet ache, all of you leaning toward some small brightness you mean to carry home and give away.
The box you buy today does not vanish when the receipt curls into your pocket. It is still being welded in a factory. It is already old and gentle in a landfill under grass. It is, most of all, sitting wrapped under a light in a room, and someone is opening it, and their face is doing the thing faces do.
I am there for that too.
I am there for all of it, always, and so, my dear, are you.