You’re walking along a sidewalk,
scuffing over divebombed leaves,
more of them every day, and your
feet brush an ordinary page,

white, dirty, a piece of clear tape
affixed to the top, and you stop,
look down, to see faint writing
there, in wobbly pencil:

miny market
←

with a definitive, left-pointing
arrow, and you bend to pick
it up, to puzzle it out. Was this
the work of a young (you imagine)

entrepreneur with a tiny sidewalk
grocery store? Was it staking a
bold claim as “mine” with a wee
misspelling?

You fold it in half, put it in a pocket,
carry it home, thinking that you will
dispose of it properly. But days later
it sits on the counter by the phone,

your old-fashioned, plugged-in-the-
wall device that only a few people
think to call you on these days, and
the sign catches your eye every

time you walk by, imagining a girl
behind an upended cardboard box
parked on that sidewalk, offering,
say, apples on a fall day. You hope

that kind passers-by stopped at
her mini market, hefted an apple
and paid her with bright coins,
just to see her gap-toothed smile,

to hear her small voice thank them
as the charmed grownups grinned
at her clever sales strategy, and,
not least, her creatively spelled sign.