Please, and Thank You, and Sorry

The lentils wouldn't scan.

I held the bag four times

under the light. The light

flickered. Nothing chimed.

An employee came over.

She tried once. It beeped.

I said thank you so much

in a voice I'd kept

somewhere I didn't know I had—

the high notes of a person

relieved by almost nothing,

grateful past the reason.

She said no problem. Left.

I stood there, finishing alone,

folded the receipt without looking

and carried that voice home—

all the way through the lot,

up the stairs, through the door.

The lentils in the bag.

That pitch. That low-level floor

of gratitude, the register

of need when you just want

the thing to work, and it won't,

and then it does. I can't

stop hearing thank you so much

in my own voice. That key.

The whole small invoice of a Saturday.

That person was me.