The original version of "Fresh Cornbread" was previously published in the Birmingham Art Journal (Vol. 3, Issue 4).

"Excuse me?" Edged with irritation, the voice nudges me from my focused contemplation of low-fat crackers. I realize my shopping cart has wandered into the grocery aisle, blocking someone's access.

"Sorry," I mumble, scooting the basket over, barely noticing the old man consulting his watch. The woman passes us, her rigid posture expressing disapproval of people who inconvenience others.

"One week ago my wife died," the old man says, as though picking up a stalled conversation.

I check the aisle, empty except for the retreating back of the woman my cart had impeded, and realize the man must have spoken to me, if to anyone at all.

"One week to the minute," he adds and lets his watch hand fall, joining the other to grip the bar of his empty shopping cart, as if it is all that holds him up. "We were married fifty-one years." His shoulders wilt. With an effort, he straightens. "But I don't want to talk about it. I'm looking for that bran with raisins."

Cereal is several rows away. I wonder if this could be the first time he's come to the grocery store without his wife. "Follow me," I say, sticking both of the boxes I've been comparing in my buggy. At the cereal row, I turn in, waiting for him to catch up. As he rounds the corner, I point to the large sign hanging from the ceiling midway down the aisle. "Can you read that?" Immediately, I wish to swallow my patronizing question. How could anyone not know that the signs index the items in the aisle?

Still, I remember taking my grandmother to the hospital to visit her husband after he suffered a serious heart attack. She stood before the elevator, very small and suddenly conscious that she might be left alone. She had come to America as a child, had never driven or negotiated the world without Grandpa's guidance. She pointing to the button beside the elevator doors that I had just pushed. "Is that how you make it come to you?"

She'd never paid attention.

The old man in the grocery store squints at the sign. "Yes, I can see it."

"They tell you what's on the row."

Relief momentarily smoothes the crevices of his weathered face, then fades as he takes in the long, triple-tiered row of cereal boxes. Like Grandma, he had never paid attention. He is totally unprepared.

I move quickly down the aisle, scanning with a practiced eye, and pluck the requested box, holding it out to him. "Is this it?"

He nods and takes it.

Silence bridges the empty space between us.

"Was it a heart attack?" I ask softly.

His mouth twitches. "Yes, a heart attack.”

I wait.

As if the thought anchors him, he repeats the first thing he said to me. “We were married fifty-one years.” This time he continues, his voice warm with memory. "We'd been out riding in the car, looking around. Had us a grand old time.”

I am still, believing for a moment in a fun day of just riding around with someone.

He looks down at the box of cereal in his hand. "We went to the store and bought some groceries." My mind amends: He followed his wife around the store while he thought about other things. His hand lifts to rub his grey-stubbled chin, a gesture that almost hides a wistful smile. "Back at the house, she went straight to the kitchen, tossing a promise over her shoulder — 'I'm going to make you some fresh corn bread to go with those greens we bought.'"

With the words, "fresh corn bread," his watery eyes light, transforming his face and skewing my perspective, ripping a veil from the reality hidden behind the mundane — a secret in plain view, like elevator buttons and signs in the grocery store.

Love. The real thing — what happens after one year or fifty-one, if you're lucky and you pay attention. Love, that word that spins the world and defies definition. Love is...the simple delight of pleasing the other. I stand frozen beside the wall of cereal boxes, vaguely aware that someone has come up behind me and stopped, blocked by our carts.

"She called my name," he says, his gaze beyond the aisles of food, his voice hoarse, his fingers pressing hollows into the cereal box. "I thought she wanted me to open something for her, so I got up. She met me halfway down the hall." He draws a breath ragged with razor cuts. "That's when she collapsed. I caught her. She died in my arms."

The person behind me is silent.

"I held her. Her head never touched the ground. She couldn't breathe; she never could get a breath.”

I cannot get a breath.

"Fifty-one years," he whispers, his voice edged now with amazement. "One week ago. Fifty-one years. It happens so fast."

I am not sure if he means death or the fifty-one years

"I'm so sorry," I say. The words seem as pale and empty as his eyes.

After a moment he looks up. "Thank you. You've been very kind."

"Can I help you find anything else?" I ask, wishing I knew something better to say, some way to fix the unfixable, to promise him I will remember that love is as simple and profound as fresh cornbread.

With a smile, he drops the cereal into his basket, waving vaguely toward the far corner of the store, as though assuring me that was more familiar territory, and turns his cart around. "No, I only need some milk."

I watch him go, until I suddenly remember the person I am impeding. "I'm sorry," I mumble, recognizing the woman I'd blocked previously, and back my cart out of her way.

She meets my eyes. "That's okay," she says.

Teresa K. Thorne is a retired police captain on her second career as the director of a business improvement district in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Her published work includes short stories, articles, and poetry in various publications, including a monthly essay column for Synergy Magazine. Her screenplay, Six Blocks Wide, has shown at venues in the U.S., Italy and London. Her writing has won several awards. She lives on a mountain in Alabama with horses, dogs, and a husband, and is working on two novels.