Underneath the grocery store’s fluorescence, my body
was color-coded and mostly invisible. I liked it,
stocking cans, pressing cardboard tray between belly
and the shelves of canned vegetables I’d face, pulling
the stock forward. Turning labels straight. 

For years I have carried my body to work,
and for years, I made apologies
for the space I occupy. Eventually the grocer
let me go for “not looking urgent enough,”
even though I sweat with the best of them,
all average-sized, as we finished our work 
together.  I asked if I was too slow. No, he said,
but I seemed it.
 
My body may break the air
much like any other thing (he didn’t say
‘whale’ or ‘ocean liner’), but it was always
strange to me how big things may look
so slow, even as they slice their way, dogged
through the choppy graygreen surf.