This is just to say

On Monday when I went to Grocery Outlet I bought two Gatorades for 59 cents each thinking that in the near future I might really want a cold Gatorade in my refrigerator.

I was right, and on Tuesday, a warm day, I drank one of the two (Strawberry/Watermelon) that had at that point been in the fridge long enough to reach that special alchemy that = refreshing.

On Wednesday, another warm day, I developed a thirst and knew that I had another refreshing experience awaiting me in the ice box.  I went to the kitchen, popped open the fridge door, and looked, and looked, but there was no second Strawberry/Watermelon Gatorade.  Had I enjoyed the first so much that I immediately drank the second and completely forgot due to an electrolyte/sugar-induced pleasure coma?  Did I sleepGatorade-drink while dreaming of a desert?  I was late to work and left the mystery at that.

On Thursday I found a note on the refrigerator, which may have been there the day before without my noticing:

You can see some coffee stains on the top left of the post-it from its brief visit to the trash can (I was its impulsive tour guide).  Once the reptilian reactionary Republican depths of my brain calmed down I realized my roommate had refracted—in a peculiarly late-20th/early-21st century way—one of the most important poems of American literature:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox  

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast 

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

I got out my William Carlos Williams Reader and left it out for my roommate congratulating him on the bravery of his selfishness—unafraid to be quintessentially human, and even more so in his sincere owning up to it, to being "thirsty and weak."

When I saw him I asked him if he saw my note, if he saw the book, if he, also a student of English literature, made the connection between the fruit of WCW's ice box and the chilled Gatorades.  He had not, but he had saved three plums from a dozen given to him from a friend's back yard to give to me to make amends.

they were delicious