Captain's Log, Stardate 04-18-2018:

Real talk?

If my grocery cart seems feral and restless, I push them out far under the moonlight, deep into the wild asphalt biosphere, out into the most desolate wilds of the parking lot.

I whisper to them that I'll miss them. I whisper just how much I'll miss them, miss them in so many ways, and it hurts, oh how it hurts and there just aren't words for this raw kind of ache.

I call them a very good cart.

The best cart, just the very best cart. The very best cart that there ever has been.

This is all for the best. We won't cry, we WON'T cry, not a drip or a tear, because we both of us know what we've known all along, deep inside.

A cart belongs with their own.

They must go, dammit, go!

Then I ever so gently release them, singing them a few lines of "Born Free." Just one line really though because I only know the one line.

They roll off whining that scraped sort of cry that they make with their wheels when the silence is already full.

Sometimes they won't go.

Sometimes they veer to the left, try to loop the way back to me.

And then, I'm afraid I throw rocks and yell terrible things. I drive them away with that false tragic anger, the twist of my face that they must understand to be hate, if they have any chance of survival.

Real love is cruel.

Real love knows when to push.

And real love has to push them away.