Playing Store
In the fourplex living room
hauling hardcover books, mom’s shoes, stuffed animals, tape cassettes, bags, candles, picture frames, notepads, jewelry, Cabbage Patch kids, sticker books, lunch pails –
using Monopoly money, found pennies & nickels & dimes,
blank bank forms paper thin like dreams,
and a Fisher Price plastic cash register
that beeped sadly, intermittently, its battery
corroding with age.
The best gig was cashier
pushing buttons, doing fake math, taking money, giving change, packing grocery bags
with purchased items to be immediately
placed back on sofa cushion & coffee table displays.
Oh, the hours of satisfied play
the therapy of shopping
then the surprising weight
of putting it all away
ending empty handed
that paper thin dream of
superfluous spending
of feeling rich
lifting up up up
like breath exhalations
blown from sugary lips
after candy cigarette breaks
on the shared balcony.
VANESSA SHIELDS, writer 
That took me back!!
Sent from my iPhone
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Hi Vanessa, I love this! How we love to imagine “ no limits with shopping”. Oh, the satisfaction, if only for a few hours! Sooo many people will identify with this!
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>
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♥♥♥ Dan MacDonald came to my store, i believe right before I opened, and I was setting up the cash register and the Chase machine… and I told him I felt like a kid, playing store. This poem reminds me of how I still feel every day in the store, playing the roles we play.
♥♥♥
On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 11:30 AM VANESSA SHIELDS, writer wrote:
> Vanessa Shields posted: ” Playing Store In the fourplex living roomhauling > hardcover books, mom’s shoes, stuffed animals, tape cassettes, bags, > candles, picture frames, notepads, jewelry, Cabbage Patch kids, sticker > books, lunch pails –using Monopoly money, found pennies &” >
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