You've been eating all my food.
The cupboard this morning had coffee, rice, Campbell's chicken noodle soup, and 13 packets of hot chocolate mix. No cereal, no oatmeal, nothing resembling food for when I'm yawning and wiping the guck out of my eyes trying to see. The fridge hums when I open it, i'm trying to keep my bare legs from the tentacles of cold leaking out the bottom. No milk- but there's 3 eggs and some cheese and taco sauce, so I have just enough to make an omelet and one hardboiled egg for lunch.
I love biking to the grocery store. My hands are warm in light green handwarmers knit by a friend, and I almost stray off the road as I look around me. The colors are more vivid than they were climbing on Sunday.
I loved seeing the leaves against the black rock against the baby blue sky. Their pigments blinded my eyes, screaming at me RED! ORANGE! YELLOW! The long blue rope matched the sky and I dug my fingers into a crack and balanced on purple shoes on footchips too small to see, but we'll pretend they're there because I can't fit my toe in the crack.
Inside the grocery store, my eyes are blinded again, this time by fluorescent bulbs and neon signs yelling "CHEF BOYARDEE 5 FOR $5!!". Orange pumpkins line the floor, guarding the fresh produce and hoping to soon guard a front door with a scary grin cut into his face. It's hard to pass them, but I'll be making my jack-o-lantern soon enough. Instead, I grab milk, eggs, cereal, and bread before heading to the check out. I pass another sign proclaiming "HOT EATS FOR COOL NIGHTS" and then I see it.
Bushels of apples. Bags of apples. Reds and yellows and greens mixed together shiny and tasty. Bushel and a peck of apples. I love you... a bushel and a pack... a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck...
I can't help it and one bushel finds a spot in my bag and I carefully pack my backpack so they won't jostle and bruise during my ride home. I lock my bike and sit on my front stoop with an open backpack, biting and tearing through apple skin while sticky juices roll down my fingers before I lick it off. Then more apples find their way in my bag for work, and I'm happy because it's the perfect snack, so tasty and fresh and October in every bite.
I leave you plenty, because I know how much you'll like them too. Just make sure to leave me a couple for tomorrow. :)
2 comments:
Top picture: Ely's Peak? I like to think I'm getting to know the climbing areas in Duluth (secondhand). Bottom picture: Cortlands? The seasons are a couple of weeks separated between you and me; if those are Honeycrisp, they got shipped north. [Me? I love Haralson. In grad school, my mother sent me a care package of them and I wept openly.]
Ooh, you'll do the hat? Kalloo, kallay! They say geniuses always choose green... so a dark forest green, to blend with the pines I run through, please. It's a shame I didn't ask earlier; I'll be in Duluth this weekend for a race: our mutual acquaintance, Samantha Carlson, is doing the Wild Duluth 50K.
While I'm thinking of it, Lightsey Darst, dancer by training, just won a Minnesota Book Award for her poetry. She's not from Minnesota, didn't write the poems in Minnesota and they're not about Minnesota. But are they good poems? Not really.
That award's going to be mine some glorious day, though you might be on a faster track to it.
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