Found Grocery List

By Winslow Schmelling

Issue Issue 51 • Spring 2025 • Nonfiction

This essay won second place in the Spring 2025 Contest Issue judged by Jenn Shapland, who wrote: “‘Found Grocery List’ delighted me. An experiment in close description, the piece toys with the relationship between art and life by listing itself on Craigslist. The author finds their way into an imaginary life for the list writer, while delving insightfully into their personal history with Diet Pepsi. The addiction story deftly embedded within it packs a punch, while maintaining an awareness of the absurdity of our relationships with commercial products, substances, and our own bodies. Reminds me of Lydia Davis.”

FOUND GROCERY LIST (Phoenix)

3rd AND JEFFERSON,

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11TH, 8:19AM

found grocery list

Dear list writer,

I found your grocery list on the ground, huddled against a lamppost. It cowered away from the wave of sidewalkers. I admit, I scrunched the piece into my pocket rather than folded it neatly. You understand, probably, since you’ve walked that same busy corner. I flattened the list with my palm against my thigh on the elevator ride up to my office. Smoothed it repetitively, like petting a dog backward. I hope you don’t mind I kept it.

You write like I do. A scrap torn off the edge of something else. A title positioned at the top, and you started with numbers. But then, you didn’t leave yourself enough room, used two different pens, forgot the numbering. Maybe, like me, you wouldn’t call yourself a planner. Still, like me, you make lists.

Diet Pepsi, numbered there, top tier: Position One.

My father used to drink it in bulk after he went sober. We’d keep crates of the stuff in the garage to make sure he didn’t run out. He drank it morning to night. Chain-sodas. There was this smooth, quick shift after coffee onto the familiar Big-Gulp Styrofoam. Dad was always ice-extra-ice anywhere we went. He’d check the cup after they’d hand it to him across the movie theater concession stand. Pass it back: more ice.

I kept a case of Coke next to his in the fridge. Red next to blue. He’d crack a can; me too. If it was the first can of the day, we’d psst, ahh after that first gulp. Wash our teeth in the stuff. We’d watch baseball because it was the only time Mom would let us crack peanuts on the couch, even if sometimes the shells slipped in between the cushions. If the peanut had a perfect skin, a smooth burgundy layer that tasted like sweat, I’d hand it to my dad. He loved the skins. I mostly liked the cracking.

Beer, an afterthought, added in a marker that I’m sure bleeds onto your kitchen counter. Which is fine if the pattern of your counter looks anything like my Formica. Beer in that pen is now bolded, like milk, eggs and Hot Pockets. Your kitchen staples?

You thought of beer after cigarettes. I know the numbers probably aren’t a ranking. Still, I wonder: which addictions precede the others? Which feel like addiction? Which just feel like you?

I can tell you’re the writer and the shopper. You know your tastes, so you don’t need to write Marlboro or Camel. You write Cigarettes-capital-C. Or Tacos-capital-T. But certainly not Coke in place of Pepsi, or the other way around.

It seems like maybe you live alone. Something about the Hot Pockets, I think. But maybe I’m wrong, maybe you live with someone. Maybe not all of these choices belong just to you.

I haven’t picked up smoking because I’d hate to ask the person behind the counter. You know, tell them how many packs. Even sometimes hate the ID check for beer and that measuring glance over my face, then over the grocery cart. Pepsi they let you buy without checking anything. And at least with Pepsi, we can see the softened, caving divots it leaves on the spaces between our teeth. We smile wide or open our mouths turned upward into the lights above our bathroom mirror to search for holes. That sizzle is a drill into our gums, into our teeth. It can burrow, even, into hard, whole bone. It’s harder to know what it’s like all the way inside of us.

If I’m honest, I’d rather feel that sizzling pain. I’d rather sense the damage.

No. I guess, I’d rather see it if I could.

My dad didn’t stay sober, but he tried, a decision he made often and perpetually. Maybe it would have been easier if we could have seen the soft caving divots, seen how deep the holes can get. Maybe if he could have seen what it looked like inside of himself. Or maybe we just needed to keep a better stock of the Diet Pepsi. Find at least one way to make that decision a little bit easier to make.

I’m not sure about the dip you wrote, S & something, but it seems like you were planning a party. That’s not me, the parties, but I hope it was fun and that you remembered everything even if you dropped this grocery list. You’re probably a great host. You probably brought enough ice for the Diet Pepsi.

If this is your list, you can email me at the Craigslist link. I’d be happy to return it to you.

Until then,

Passerby

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Winslow Schmelling

Winslow Schmelling is a writer and educator from the Sonoran Desert. As an ex-professional pizza maker and current content marketer, she feels lucky to teach creative writing in the desert where she grew up. Her MFA in fiction is from Arizona State University, and her creative work is published or forthcoming in Black Fox Literary, LitHub, Heavy Feather Review, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere.