I Remember My Heart Stopping

I remember as a child shopping in Twaites Market.
It had three aisles plus one wider one for vegetables
and fruit, plus all the current week’s top specials.

I remember Mom cashing her pay check on Fridays.
We’d do the week’s shopping then, going up and down
every single aisle, grabbing  and dropping the usual,
in an ever-growing pile in the grocery cart.

Conversation consisted of imperatives:
“Get…No…Reach…No…Enough…Put…Go…”

Distracted seeing some shiny silver shimmering.

She was gone!

“MA!”

“Here.”  She was only in the next aisle, around the corner.

I remember that heart stopping feeling,… still.
The intake of breath, the widening of little eyes,
The scream ready to burst through my body, MAMA.

I remember this feeling as I look through those cages
into pools of terror filled eyes screaming MAMA.
I remember.  What will they remember?