“Someplace Like Montana” – Ada Limón
Now when I go to the grocery store, I’m amazed at the wide aisles of bright food and food-stuffs, and it’s nothing like the bodega I shopped in for years, in Brooklyn, between the bars we liked. Once, when I was going for groceries, I ran into T, and we decided we needed to drink, rather than shop, and we did.
There were a lot of beers on tap, and the taps were all different like toys in a dentist’s toy chest, so I said, I’ll have what she’s having, and maybe it was snowing out, and it seemed to be at a time when every shirt I bought at the secondhand store would turn out to be see-through, but I wouldn’t know it until it was too late. So, a lot of conversations would start, Is this shirt see-through? And it was.
We talked for a long time, grocery bags empty on the chair, and we both talked about moving to someplace like Montana and how sometimes it would be nice to see more sky than just this little square between the bridges and buildings, but then we’d miss Brooklyn, and each other, and we ordered another beer.
T was writing a play, also some articles, and we both just needed some money, and maybe to make out with someone who wasn’t an asshole. But also, we wanted to make great art. T was really good at naming things so we decided she should be a Titleologist and she liked that, so she agreed.
What would we do if we lived in someplace like Montana?
We’d go for walks, and look at trees, and write and look at the sky.
Yes, and we’d cook and go to those huge grocery stores that have toy cars attached to the carts so kids can pretend to be driving.
Yes, and we’d probably have kids, too.
All of this seemed really far off and not like us at all, so we ordered another beer and said, Life is long.
Now, I’m walking around the grocery store, in Kentucky and I’ve just looked at trees, and sky, and I should write something, so I ask T to tell me what to write about, she says, Saturation, and I think of that feeling when you’re really full, or life is full and you can’t think of anything else that could fit in it, and then even more sky comes and more days and there is so much to remember and swallow. I ask T what I should call the thing I write about Saturation, because she’s a titleologist, and she says, Someplace Like Montana.
