My father enters aisle nine for the two-hundred and twentieth time. The familiar rows of soybeans, peanuts, and assorted seaweed flank him like a warm hospital blanket. He kneels at the seaweed: my favorite. He recalls the purple packaging of my favorite brand and piles them into his shopping cart. At the soybeans, he squeezes. If a soybean is weak, he puts it back, and picks up another bag. He repeats until he finds soybeans suitable for my mom’s morning soymilk.

This market is full for early morning, its wanderers just as meticulous as my father. I think I see an old friend at the seafood section, but I can’t be sure. I am close enough to the front that I can feel the wind of the market blowing through the occasionally opening automatic doors, and I can smell good meat. The air is warm, despite the frozen aisle at the front. It’s the perfect supermarket, and I don’t care if I can’t go in, not yet.

The line is long. My father went a few decades ago, and it thrills me to see he still remembers us, that he is still stocking up on me and my mother’s favorite foods; it sutures the hole I’ve had in my chest since he went. But, I remind myself, upon feeling the stitches loosen, that’s all just a story I’m putting onto it, and that he could have changed in the past few years. He could be buying them for himself.

In front of me is an elderly couple, ones I am surprised are in line this far back. They hold hands and stand silently and from this angle I can’t tell anything about their lives, or if they love each other.

My mother, surprisingly, is not in line. I hear her from the parking lot anyway.

“Do you see your father?”

“I do.”

“How is he?”

“Getting soybeans.”

She smiles, the same thought probably keeping her chest-hole tightly closed.

The boy behind me taps on my shoulders.

“Do you mind if I go ahead of you?”

He couldn’t be over six, I know it. He’s young, too young to be right behind me, too young to even be in this line.

“I don’t feel too good and need to go in. Can I go ahead of you?”

I feel that familiar hole open in my chest. I stop myself from tearing open by scrunching my nose.

“I don’t feel good either, honey, I’m sorry. That’s why we are here.”

He looks at me, all fifty years of me, hair healthy and face plump.

“You’re sick?”

“I am.”

“With what?”

“Do you see that man in there?” I point to my father’s bald head, his signature cable-knit sweater in eternal slight disrepair.

The boy nods.

“Well, I really miss him. Do you know what that’s like? To really miss someone?”

He nods again.

“Are they in there, too?” I ask.

“No. They’re not even in line yet.”

“Where are they?”

“Back home. They aren’t sick. But I will miss them, when I go.”

“Oh.”

“Do you know what that’s like? To miss someone like that?”

I think about it. Will I miss my mother? Surely. My friends? They won’t be in line for a few more decades, if they are lucky.

“I do.”

The boy starts to cry.

“Please let me go ahead. I really need to go.”

I look at my father, entering aisle nine for the two-hundred and twenty-first time. I see him palming through the seaweed, getting the purple-packaged ones, popping soybeans until red circles are burnt into the soft part of his fingers. I see him remember us. I see his body, his real body, standing and breathing.

There aren’t many people in front of me now, the elderly couple hugging now, saying go ahead of me, I’ll see you in a second and I know now that they love each other. The boy is inconsolable. My mother is still in the parking lot. I don’t know how long it will take for her to get in line. I think about how I will miss her. How she will have to imagine my father picking up soybeans for the foreseeable future.

The hole rips open in my chest and there’s no more chance of repair.

“Go ahead.” I tell him.

As he passes, I fall out of line. Not by will, but almost by force.

I stumble into the parking lot, SUVS and carts whizzing by me. I can’t catch my balance, and I fall on to the concrete. It feels like a soft bed.

I lay and stay there and open my eyes and the sky is bright blue but I keep looking and it doesn’t hurt, because if the sun can’t fill that hole that’s burst open in my chest, it can’t burn my eyes.