Dear God of Thrift Stores.

Holy Handmedown Lord of the Secondhand. I come to you impoverished and ironic to sink my fingers into your junkbins and sift through your innards. I come to you to make wholes out of incompletes, newandimprove a brokedownbeatup, to stitch together echoes. I seek you on red tag days when everything is 50% off.

In Clothing, I roam the racks of hanging garments hungry for body heat. Cardigans and slacks from mismatched eras. Decades crash against my skin. I fill spaces vacated by the departed.

In Shoes, I slip into a pair of worn loafers, feel someone else’s depression
of toes, their miles pushed into the earth.

In Knick-Knacks, a stack of Paint Nite canvases abandoned along with unused brushes and fourteen tubes of sky.

In Maps, I find scores of vacuums filled with footstep lint leftover from sweltering apartments.

In Lighting, a string theory of spent Christmas lights lay tangled alongside a mess of felled lampposts.

In Automotive, a whole moonspill, dinged on the corners but still in useable condition, and small enough to fit snug beneath my jacket.

In Children’s, I find a porcelain duck, deflated balloons, and everything covered in glitter.

In the Furniture, disassembled clouds packed into canning jars. Each one perfect except for fragments of sky still stuck to them. You can hear the train whistles trapped inside if you hold the glass against your ear.

A pile of pressed desert in Accessories. An assortment of tonguescrapings in Décor. All the words never spoken neatly arranged in Domestics.

There’s so much more, Dear God of Thrift Stores. Everything sold as-is. As-was. Will be. Just like this prayer found tucked away in Housewares. Every word borrowed and repurposed. I pray for your wisdom. Steer me steady through your long aisles. Guide my hands to all that is vintage, all that is gently-used, all that is previously-loved. Amen.