The Pickle Jar

An old woman can't stop complaining every day, about the price of the pickle jar…





The #poem

I once knew an old woman
who would stop me every morning
at the grocery mart

tugging at my arm with her trembling hands
only to ask me
do you know,
what they are charging,
for these pickle jars?


I would always shake my head and smile,
pretending

I hadn't heard her story
already a million times

of how she used to sell much bigger jars
for just half the price

and what a pity it was

she stopped making her special pickle
back in 1999

that's when, her hands first trembled
and her knees refused to let her climb,
the stairs to her terrace,
where she laid the fruits to dry

her favorite,

Mango and Lime

It was always hard for me to imagine
that these frail hands,
had labored in a factory for 20 years

all day and all night

and these weak knees ,
had once helped her escape
her homeland, riddled with strife
where she had seen her closest friends
perish ,
in front of her eyes.

She hadn't had an easy life
her every wrinkle betrayed the many battles…

some she had won,
and most she had lost in life

but every time I would ask her about her past
she would simply smile

I like to remember the beautiful moments

the bad memories, I have left behind.

Those moments of pain she had lived ,
she now passed around as stories of courage
among her grand kids at dinner time

And so every morning,
I spared her some moments from my busy life
to hear that same story
I had heard a million times


Only because ,

I was amazed at how this woman
who had suffered so greatly in life
now at an age, where,
most of the people she spent her whole life loving,
had long died

was so at peace with her life
and had no complaints except,

how these people were committing a crime
by selling her favorite pickles at double the price

Oh what a shame it was,
that she stopped making those

back in 1999.


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