#MIDDLEBURY
Senior Discount
Ali Liebegott
I want to grow old with you.
Old, old.
So old we pad through the supermarket
using the shopping cart as a cane that steadies us.
I’ll wait at register two in my green sweater
with threadbare elbows, smiling
because you’ve forgotten the bag of day-old pastries.
The cashier will tell me a joke about barbers as I wait.
He repeats the first line three times
but the only word I understand is barber.
Over the years we’ve caught inklings
of our shrinking frames and hunched spines.
You’re a little confused
looking for me at the wrong register with a bag
of almost-stale croissants clenched in your hand.
The first time I held your hand it felt enormous in my own.
Sasquatch, I teased you, a million years ago.
Over here, I yell, but not in a mad way.
We’re laughing.
You have a bright yellow pin on your coat that says, Shalom!
Senior Discount, you say.
But the cashier already knows us.
We’re everyone’s favorite customers.
About this poem
“I worked as a cashier at a grocery store for seven years where we had a senior discount. This discount brought out the good and bad in people. I was newly in love when I wrote this and wanted to imagine me and my girlfriend growing old together being the good kind of customers.” – Ali Liebegott
About Ali Liebegott
Ali Liebegott is the author of “Cha-Ching!” (City Lights, 2013). She writes for the TV show “Transparent” and lives in Los Angeles.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Ali Liebegott. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
