“Buying that bookcase?” she asks.
Her body’s language is an easy read:
too much disappointment and heartache.

For her, my “yes” is just
another defeat.

Then, folding herself
into the crowd, she leaves me
with this new hole in my heart,
where before was a simple
and shallow shopper’s joy.

Matthew, despite his best efforts to ruin his life, has failed. He wonders if his good fortune, finding his disembodied heart in Maine, is good karma from previous incarnations, or is grace. He suspects it is grace.