Velleity

It happened in the cereal aisle

Or in traffic, if that’s more your speed

A man deciding loudly that the woman ahead of him

Was moving too slowly

That her coupons were a personal affront

That her body, specifically, was the problem with everything.

And I stood there, trying to make myself as small as possible

Holding my Raisin Bran like it was evidence.

There’s a word for what I wanted to do

Wanted, being the operative failure

The tell

The confession I’m building here

one stanza at a time.

I wanted to say something, to speak up

To stop him from saying the things

He didn’t mean, things he would have never said

Had it not been that particular day in that particular moment

I wanted to speak out

But in the way you keep planning on going back for your degree

The way  want operates at a comfortable distance from doing

I have read all the right books

I know the literature of witness

I have strong opinions on the bystander effect

That I have shared with friends, or at dinner parties,

With some force, some backbone.

He was still talking. Still attacking.

She was still counting coupons

And I suddenly found the nutritional information mesmerizing

Thiamine

Riboflavin

Your daily recommended dose of spine.

This is what never gets said about the assassination attempt on common decency…

It doesn’t happen in a motorcade

Or at a White House presser

It happens on a Saturday night

In a grocery store full of people

Each calculating the cost of a sentence

And keeping their mouths full of nothing

Or in the front seat of a car where you think you’re listening

But you keep hearing all the wrong things and saying even worse…

I’ll put my box in a cart

I’ll move over to the next cashier

Ignoring the slow death

As if none of it can be traced back to me

In the end.