Milk

~ Live & Learn

drink-milk-spill

For half a century,
he opens the door and there it is.
Chillin’ and chilled.
Cold, smooth, white as snow.

From bottles, to cartons, to jugs.
On cereal.
With chocolate chip cookies and PB&J.
A chaser for warm apple crisp.

And then he wakes.

Blink.

A half a century later.

And this insomniac finds himself standing in front of the open refrigerator door. The same Boy who stood in a similar place on a similar summer morning in July. Bare foot.  White t-shirt. Undershorts. With the freon propellant misting him with its cool breeze. And he pauses to think.

Tolerant. To intolerant.

There he finds a plastic jug of 2% flanked by “All Natural Blue Diamond Almond Breeze Almond Milk.”

And a single thought comes to his mind. The title of the 1989 biography written by Marion Meade:

Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?

Notes:

24 thoughts on “Milk”

  11. Our own milk cow, Esmerelda, and our own little pasteurizer. Butter made by hand. What could be more natural and wholesome. So, no one could understand why I often barfed after breakfast before getting on the school bus, why I would whisper my mom awake in the night with, “I don’t feel good.” She gave me aspirin and sent me back to bed. Lactose Intolerance would have been traitorous to our way of life.

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