2015

The receipt was faded, almost illegible:

a pharmacy, a grocery store in a neighborhood

I'd never heard of, August 2015.

Toothpaste. Milk. A magazine. Batteries.

Someone bought these things.

Someone needed them badly enough

to keep the receipt.

Or forgot it was there.

The coat was thin, the pockets deep.

I wore it for a week before I found it.

Held the receipt up to the light,

tried to imagine the person—

what they looked like, where they were going,

why they bought batteries at 7:15 p.m.

on a Tuesday.

The store's probably closed by now.

The person who bought the toothpaste

is someone else now, if they're anyone.

Time does that. Changes you

without your permission.

But the receipt stayed.

A small map of an ordinary moment.

I put it back in the pocket,

wore the coat another week,

and every time my hand went into that pocket,

I thought about the person who had stood

in that pharmacy in that neighborhood,

reaching for batteries,

unaware that years later

someone else would find the proof

that they had been there,

had needed something,

had forgotten.