I used to breeze through Whole Foods
like a poet through a meadow,
grabbing organic basil without checking the price,
tossing wild-caught salmon into my cart as if it were a metaphor for freedom.

But now I enter like a monk on a vow of silence and savings,
armed with a list so strict it could double as a court summons.

The rib-eye steak sits behind glass like a museum piece, $32.99 per pound, and I whisper to it, “Not today, old friend.” Instead, I court ground beef,
on sale,
lean but emotionally available.

I skip the name-brand cereal,
those glossy boxes with cartoon mascots that once whispered sweet nothings to my inner child.
Now I reach for the store brand,
whose mascot is a barcode.

Ice cream?
Only if it’s nonpremium, on clearance, and possibly made of frozen existential dread.
I bake my own cookies now,
but only if flour is buy-one-get-one, and the eggs don’t require a co-signer.

I see fellow pilgrims in the aisle,
heads bowed to price tags, calculating the cost of joy in ounces and coupons.
One woman debates yogurt like it’s a philosophical dilemma. Another man stares at bananas as if they’ve betrayed him.

We used to shop in 20 minutes.
Now it’s an hour-long epic,
a Homeric journey through discounts and despair,
where the checkout line is the final test and the cashier, a minor deity who judges your choices with the beep of a scanner.

And still, we return each week, hopeful, hungry, armed with clipped coupons and the quiet belief that maybe next time, the steak will be on sale.