The supermarket made me feel poor in my chest

Dear Delyara, I don’t mean technically poor. I mean that tightening inside. I was standing there putting ordinary things in the trolley and doing the quiet little cuts women do without announcing them. Put that back. Choose the smaller one. Leave that. Not for me. Maybe next week. The children need this more. We can do without that. By the time I got to the checkout, I felt reduced. No one around me knew anything had happened. From the outside, I looked like a woman shopping. Inside, I felt my whole mood had been rearranged by prices, by choosing what to deny, by pretending none of it reached my dignity. That is what money does some days. Not only strain. Shrinkage.