you can tell so much about people based on the contents of their whole foods shopping carts in between jobs on a friday afternoon. this is when the sad people shop, i think. or maybe just the wise ones, the people who know exactly what they want, who know that their fellow all-organic macrobiotic enthusiasts will be busy doing other things and that the population of whole foods will be the emotional wreckage of new york: 

the people with occupied hearts. 

note that i say occupied, rather than broken. i say this because i am one of them, one of the distracted, an aimless wanderer whose feet brought me to whole foods during my lonely hour between jobs. my heart, not even remotely broken, is, at the moment, otherwise occupied, existing quietly outside of my body.

my heart is out of town recording a record and my body went to whole foods to buy tuna salad.  i stood in line behind a woman purchasing six viles of fish oil (?) and a couple arguing about kale. i avoided eye contact with a teenager whose pink forehead indicated freshly waxed eyebrows and tried not to stare at an unkempt man muttering about the price of pomegranates. 

i stood in line with my tuna salad and eyeballed the wall of chocolate bars i never let myself investigate as a woman shamefully carrying a single serving of macaroni and cheese got into line behind me. she held my spot as i picked out the best of the bunch— milk chocolate with toffee and sea salt— and dropped it into my sad little occupied heart’s basket.

tonight, i had chocolate for dinner and left my tuna salad in the fridge.

i wonder how the fish oil lady fared.