pops Lindor truffles in her mouth 
like they’re her own.
Like we aren’t supposed to carry them out,
offerings to customers in cool cars in the lot.

Like her only wish in life is
to try every flavor available,
selected by the color of the wrapper.
Lavender looks better than sky blue

looks better than rusted orange
looks better than dark red.
No mind for flavors:
caramel and sea salt and dark chocolate.

Chocolate is chocolate, she says.
She carries them stuffed
in the pockets of her apron,
ready to be plucked with slender fingers

and placed in the palms
of other down-on-their-luck associates. 
They round out her wrinkled cheeks
as she tells stories about her daughter abroad,

lost in the thick jungles and dense beaches
of thailand and peru.
She tells me one afternoon,
as we load carts together in the back room,

that she’d like to take a nice vacation, a long one,
somewhere she and her daughter could stay together,
before absentmindedly pressing a navy wrapper into my hand
and trundling off to some other long awaited errand.