Bingo Every Tuesday (Part II)

More scraps from my journal "Bingo Every Tuesday:"

1.

With the head of my small bedside lamp nestled close, I read a telephone book I find in the attic. I consider dialing one of the landlines: Gregory and Mary Anne Allan on Birch Lane.  I just want to see if they're gone –– not home, moved away, dead, or any other version of "gone." Except for the company of my small bedside lamp, I'm alone.

2.

Tonight, in bed, I'm reading a baking book. I fold back the corners of the pages with recipes I want to follow. Fill me, fill me, fill me.

3.

A sign on the Delaware bridge reads: "If you are in a crisis, call 1-800-293-TALK." I picture a googly--eyed man in his apartment in Delaware waiting for the phone to ring. He's plucking his nose hairs when he realizes he's hungry and out of canned tuna fish. "Shit," he says. If someone calls to say, "I'm in a crisis," he'll cut the crap. He'll say, "Me too. I'm in a crisis too."  But no one ever calls.

4.

I'll marry a man who doesn't forget to bring a flashlight on backpacking trips. He must have many other qualities too, of course. But this one's key.

5.

I just learned that my college education is paid for in part by war reparations from Germany. Good.

6.

Each morning, I press my forehead to the mirror and wonder what it would be like to kiss myself. 
And, each morning, my mother smiles at herself in the oval mirror downstairs.

7.

I don’t know much 

About the penny candy days of the 50s

When children played "Indians and Cowboys"
In the streets and beat each other up until it was time

To sit down, say grace, and eat dinner with the family.

But I know about the cross above the kitchen sink in the

God fearing house my mother grew up in –– a house with windows 

Clenched like the teeth of girls who can't  speak their minds.

And I know about my grandfather taking her to the parking lot 

Of a Catholic orphanage to scare her into being "good."

And I know my mother wished that pennies for candy

Wasn't her parents only way of saying "You are loved."

8.

 

When Daddy’s back hurts too much to try,

I kneel, untie his double-knotted laces,

And pull from the heels like he says.

9.

 

I visit the deathbed 

Of the weathered rock–of–a–man

Who was my high school Latin teacher.

Breathing his chalky smell,

I read to him from Catullus,

And he grips my wrist.

10.

 

At a café named Sweetie Pies in Placerville, CA, 
Alyssa orders the New England Clam Chowder.  
We're out west, I say. 
It’s not like we're going back east anytime soon, she says.

For the waiter, we leave a piece 
Of the fudge we’ve bought next door. 
On the check, I write, For you, hot stuff  
And draw an arrow pointing to the fudge. 

11.

God, sometimes I feel like a decadent chocolate cake. (What?)