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📓 Sunday, October 19, 2025 — 4:39 p.m.
El Mercadito, East L.A.
There’s a woman who always buys from me.
She’s in her forties — kind eyes, warm smile, a little tired.
Her mother usually runs a stall here at El Mercadito,
but she’s in Mexico right now, getting treatment.
So the daughter’s been holding it down, keeping things going.
Today, she stopped at her friend’s booth — another seller —
and bought some clothes for herself.
Her friend laughed, “When are you going to wear it?”
She said, “When it rains. When there’s a big party.”
After she walked off, her friend turned to me.
“She always buys clothes,” she said,
“but she never wears them. Always the same thing.
I don’t understand.”
But it wasn’t gossip — it was grief in disguise.
A small ache behind the words.
Like watching someone you care about
get caught in a loop she doesn’t know she’s in.
And I thought —
maybe she’s not buying clothes.
Maybe she’s buying a future.
One where it rains again.
When you see the rain, you do not have to wait for the storm.
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