Goodwill

by Lisa Huffaker, on goodwill

On my way to the corner of Ross and Greenville

I’m almost in a wreck because somebody in a blue Toyota

keeps trying to let me go first at the stop sign.

She smiles, keeps signaling after you, then second-guessing it.

We take turns lurching. What an embarrassing crash

that would have been. I imagine us both

apologizing over and over.

Later at the thrift shop

a toddler sits in a cart, yelling the alphabet

and playing the xylophone while his mother

tries on work pants. We aren’t getting that xylophone

she tells him in the checkout line. A man in a cowboy hat

buys it for him anyway, mutters that’s the easiest way

to get that fool thing outta here. The crying stops

and the doors slide shut and I stand in the sudden quiet

turning woolen skirts inside out, to admire pinked seams

and that perfect, invisible hem, where someone’s thimble

sent the needle spiral-wise through the ribbon.

That’s when somebody’s stack of dishes hits the floor.

I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry she says. A few of us stoop

to pile the shards. Someone runs for the dustpan. I notice

they are hand painted with violets and swans. What a shame –

these were so nice, I say. She says Goodwill is a sort of library.

You can read these things like books.

I hardly ever buy anything anymore, she says.

I just come here to study.

And I wonder what remains, once a human hand

leaves what it has touched: the wood worn in places

along the grip of this hammer, where sweat has darkened it.

I thumb its glittering face, burnished by ten thousand

nailheads. I lift it, to feel the arc and swing:

somebody’s good intent, driving one small act

and then another. I think surely those nails must be

holding something together, even now.