You’ve been in my kitchen this year,

though you may not know it.

Your voices nourish my blood

as the sun slips beneath the earth,

all peachy and delicious and achingly

distant. You are here, even though

you’ve not.

Your faces laugh and sweeten

my days, reconstructed across time and space

by technology I can’t begin to understand.

Can you feel me, billowing towards you,

a little threadbare sometimes, stretched

from coast to coast and pole to pole,

glistening?

May this poem be a quilt, wrapping you

in the honey-gold light of my Tennessee kitchen,

with blue vases on the windowsill,

and African violets still in bloom.

The sun’s coming up over the mountains,

a rim of red, like sleepless eyes.

I’m tired of tangling with words,

so I’ll say it plain: thank you

for keeping me company,

for being & being you.