LOVE
When I was twenty, I made him pasta –kind of a Chef Boyardee type deal, similar to Spaghetti-O’s, but not confined to merely that single letter of the alphabet. I spooned the goopy orange creation into blue bowls, one of which had been chipped during a late-night raid on the pantry. Beau, stoned out of his mind, had stared intently at the bowl as he walked directly into the doorframe, chipping the edge, though we had shrugged innocently enough when his mother demanded an explanation. Setting the bowls on the Adirondack table –or, the table matching the Adirondack chairs; I’m not sure the table itself is technically called Adirondack—I arranged the powder blue napkins and sweaty glasses of tea –one sweet, one not. Then, with all the grace of an uncoordinated preschooler, I propped the spoon across his pasta and dug my fingers around until I had arranged four slimey letters in the hold of the sterling silver.
He didn’t notice when he trudged up the porch steps, his legs mucky from the swamp and a sheet of beady sweat dancing down his red forehead. With no more circumstance than one would expect of a tired boy, he collapsed into one of the chairs, dug the spoon deeper into the pasta, and swallowed LOVE with a jumble of equally as meaningless letters.
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