Yet I remember 

by Lindel Gore

06:00 hours, 24, 7, Phoenix, Arizona: coffee, and toast. This is the smell that floods my mind from the time I spent with grandma (My father’s mother). I was thirteen to seventeen years old then. 

After bloody noses, black eyes and bruised ribs, the smell of grandmas’ toast and coffee each morning was a peaceful and welcome change.

07:00 hours, Monday through Friday, Mesa, Arizona: (Moms was mother’s mother). She fixed a good breakfast, ran her fingers though my hair, and managed to slip a couple pieces of caramel candy into my hand just before I left for school every day. These are some of my memory from age seven though to nine.

After the lies, demands for truth when the purpose was deceit, Moms’ gentle hand, the smell of her caramel candy, apples and oatmeal were refreshing.

That was a long time ago and now I find myself in forever, with yesterdays’ pain and who knows about tomorrow? Now it is forever. The bloody noses, black eyes and bruised ribs come.

They come in my dreams and in the faces of people I see today and yesterday. It’s called life. The lies, cheats and deceits are everywhere, likely in everybody, and all over time. My father’s mom is no longer in Phoenix. She’s gone. Moms, my mother’s mom, will never run her soft fingers through my hair again. 

Yet I remember. 

LinnRay (Lindel Ray Gore Sr.) 

04 May 2018

Editor’s note: This piece, written by Lindel Gore, was presented at the StateoftheOzarks Writers & Artists Night on June 25, 2018. His work inspired the double-sided art of James Beaumont, shown above and below.