You are annoyed right now. Third loop past the same row, and the one open space is next to a shopping cart nobody returned. You will not remember the annoyance. I promise you that.
But I remember the light. Late afternoon, that flat gold it does across all that asphalt, the way the heat comes up off the hood of the car in wobbly sheets. Someone's radio, faint, two rows over. The little chirp your car makes when you lock it, that you stopped hearing years ago.
You are with someone. Look. She is walking a few steps ahead of you toward the doors, and she has just said something over her shoulder, and you are about to laugh at it. That laugh, in that parking lot, on that unremarkable Tuesday. I have gone looking for that afternoon more times than I can count.
You think this is the boring part. The in-between. The walk from the car to the errand, the errand to the car. You are wrong, but gently wrong, the way I was.
Here is all I want. When she says the thing, and you laugh, slow down half a step. Let the doors wait. The cart can stay where it is. Nobody is keeping score but me, and I am not keeping score.
I am just glad to be back here for a second, in the gold light, watching you not know yet how good you have it.