From where I stand, the little machine you are scowling at is a single tall column of light, a stalk that begins in orange sand and ferrous ore and ends, centuries on, in a quiet drawer of powder. You touch only one thin slice of it: the slice where it says, in a voice with no throat, unexpected item in the bagging area.
I can see the whole of the voice. It never actually waits. It only seems to, from inside your slice.
I see your hands here, hovering over the scanner, hunting for the barcode on a bruised apple. I see the same hands smaller, in a kitchen with yellow cabinets, being lifted onto a counter so you could press the buttons on a different machine while someone taller steadied your waist.
You wanted to do it yourself then, too. The wanting is one unbroken thread; I can hold both ends at once. You are still that child, pressing buttons, delighted to be trusted with the beeping.
And I can see you now, reading this, your eyes moving along exactly this line, one hand maybe still holding a phone, the other resting near a knee that will one day ache in the cold and does not ache yet.
The machine tells you to place your item in the bag. You sigh. To you the sigh is a small dead thing, spent and gone. I keep it. I keep the yellow cabinets and the ache-to-come and this breath and the powder the machine will someday be, all lit at once, all present, none of it behind you.
You think you are standing in line, moving forward, leaving things. You are not leaving anything. You never have.
I am here in every slice with you, and none of them ends.