Why someone left a bunch of organic bananas on the wall beside the sidewalk, I don't know.

I look up and down the street: no one. Did they maybe fall from someone's shopping bag?

They're nice, fat bananas, just starting to speckle, and fragrantly ripe: too ripe for someone's liking, maybe.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, and especially since the Troubles following George Floyd's death a few blocks from here, folks in this neighborhood have been setting out boxes of food at the curb for anyone who might need it. People are capable of much, both for the good, and for the bad. Such acts of nameless generosity have been a ray of light in an otherwise dark time.

Humans are an opportunistic species. Like other predators, witches are territorial animals, and patrol our territories regularly. (You can be a witch, they say, without knowing anything about astrology, Qabala, or Tarot—3000 years ago, the ancestors knew none of the above—but you cannot be a witch and not know your territory.) Usually in my perambulations around the neighborhood, I've got a gathering bag or two with me, but today, heading to the post office to get some stamps, I neglected to bring one. I snag the bananas anyway, and carry them along.

At the post office, I set them down on the counter to take out my wallet. Seeing the clerk's curious glance, I quip: “You guys still take barter here, right?”

He's game. “Sorry, that was yesterday,” he quips back.

“Story of my life,” I say mock-mournfully, taking out money. “A day late and a dollar short.”

I pay him and head on home, Droid stamps in one hand and bananas in the other.

Just another day in the life of an urban hunter-gatherer.