chocolates

if we can have chocolates, we will never die, or if we do we will sail away in gold paper, little wrapped corpses filled with praline and not guts, almonds and not bones. we will tie ourselves up in ribbons and not shrouds, and we will live forever like my mother does, dead for 5 years and my mother in law who died a year ago this coming sunday and who never bought chocolates or anything unless it was on sale or had a coupon, and my dad saying hell, charlotte, if you want it get it, because god knows you can't take it with you. he'd laugh and get another shirt at brooks brothes, buy everyone another drink at the prineton club, where he wasn't a memeber but he kept on sneaking in and paying cash. and wonder of wonders, they made him a member anyway, thought he was a working class norweigan from seattle, and only was a C student at the U of Wash, which wasn't much of a school at the time.

but perhaps you can take them. I gather them up inside myself every day -- my dead family -- as i eat the chocolates and buy the retail, not holding onto it, not that, but letting it melt for a moment on my tongue. all of them -- my mother and my father and my bohemian russian grand-parents, the nutty aristo artistes with their dogs and their big old-fashioned luggage, and my grandmother saying in russian and german and french and italian -- you can't take it with you, but when you hold it for a moment isn't it so very sweetie sweet?

and charlotte will say at last, yes it is sweet and yes i will enjoy it, i will take the gift and live in the lap of at last luxury.

we salute you miss beauty queen of chicago, miss schtetl of 1949. of blessed memory. yes. sweet.