Cheap
You find your grandmother
sitting on the dusty antique shop shelf
in a green glazed rough edged mixing bowl,
the kind they used to sell in the hardware stores for cheap,
so no one in those days ever paid them much mind,
functional as they were in a kitchen like hers
where you made what you could from scratch.
You are moved to pick it up,
your fingers reading the low relief on its sides,
a house and garden as far from the tenement
she lived in as you are now
from the calloused grip of her hand on your little arm.
You think maybe you'll rescue it
from the clutter and chaos of this place,
but then you look at the price and you picture her
as she tsks and shakes her head.
Of course you put it back,
taking what's free instead.
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