She was a pastor's daughter and one of my first crushes.
I used to visit her every summer
at my aunt's Christian camp in upstate NY
back when family and females held the same value.
Her younger brother and I would sleep in bunk beds
by night but she and I fed each other a year's worth of
Honey Nut Cheerios on the same beds by day:
finger food...food for the burgeoning soul.
I don't remember when I stopped making the annual
trip - perhaps it was when family, like a toy at the
bottom of a cereal box, became less substantial and
females thereby followed suit.
Nowadays, I prefer to keep things less nutty and
perhaps a little less sweet. I dump my cheerios into a
bowl: the milk dilutes and makes an echO as lOnely
as a wOlf hOwling at the desert mOOn.
