gallindz

It’s nice in the morning to walk into the kitchen and find the sweetest soul on this earth who needs me. ©LRO 2024

Now when the moon comes over the mountain like a fat peach in season, I recall how my teeth took it like a lover. Lifting it carefully as I stood over the sink. Sucking the juice from my fingers and thumb. My tongue running over my chin making me smile. Me, so small and free. Lifting something to ecstasy. Not knowing what it even meant. Except that it was ripe. And I was five. ©LRO 2024

And then he can write. A tiny poem with an entire heart in it. About a broken piece of white plate. I see how you felt sorry for it. You sweet thing. Your words as smooth as the white plate. You called it nice. No one has ever written anything like this. Believe me. What a wild ride down your lines, honey. I can’t turn my face away from this darling piece of scrap paper, bunched up in your jeans pocket. A broken white plate. Now feeling good about itself.

Dear Thanksgiving, Thank you for the casserole with four cheeses with the top crusty pieces and silky ones underneath. Thank you for the Barefoot Contessa. God bless her. Thanks for the ground beef, pork and veal and for the tomatoes canned in season giving these meatballs a reason to exist. Thank you for the neglected knife in the drawer and for saving the life, maybe of one lucky turkey— the size of a big baby— in exchange for rigatonis, with grooves that cradle the sauce. And thank you for the boiling water, itself such a mystery— Thank you for the cows and their milk that made this wedge of Parm, that we grate and grate and grate until our hands ache. Thank you for this place that we call home and remembering we are never alone. Thank you for the kind souls sitting here who I love to no end; who always bring out the best in me. And thank you for the ones in heaven that we miss wrapped up as small gifts, inside the cavern of our hearts. And Dear, Dear Thanksgiving, thank you

It’s morning and I make the coffee as you watch me from the photo propped up against the wall. I give your nose a boop with my kissed finger losing count of the scoops of mocha java- and start all over again. The point is, my arms ache to hold the missing you. And I know if I could reach into the black frame through the glass, I could roll over and over the gold pine needles with you. The October of you. And drench myself in the sun of you. Letting go of the heavy layers of this crazy world right now. ©LRO 2023

Fifty years since we left high school and we’ve rendezvoused at the Sheraton Inn. A little excited, a little nervous as we search for familiar faces from the hallways after class. Faces touched with good and hard times, hiding behind smiles and lines. And some of us are absent. But they are here, Suffrin Blye. My pulse drumming faster than the drummer. Memories from our era float in the background. A voice at the microphone sweetly sings To Love Somebody; and in our hearts and minds we are transformed back to the Needham High School dance. Brut and Heaven Scent drifting through the gym. The bodies we once had magically appear. Friends and lovers, all here-- in our flawless, young skin doing it all over again. Looking around, I fold down the page corners of this night-- wanting all of this to last. Because “you don’t know the way I love,” all of you. ©LRO October 2023