Cherry Sigh

Abby Luby

He laughs in his sleep
            as the cherry pie cools
            on the rack.

His somnolent smile for
            fruit in gelatinous languish
a slip of syrup oozes
            through a hole in the crust.

Do the cherries recall
            his knuckles nipping
their sinewy stems? Notching
            out their pits? Shaping
the raw dough into
            a sloped shallow bed
for toasty slumber?

Next to him, I dream of that stroll in Brooklyn
            under the flushed light
of cherry blossoms his curved
            palm over mine our veins aligned
warm flesh for my slim fingers

Abby Luby is a writer and journalist who lives and works in New York’s Lower Hudson Valley. Her published short stories appear in Parhelion and Persimmon Tree and two poems are published in Syncopation Literary Journal. As a journalist she writes for The New York Daily News, SolveClimateNews, The Real Deal, The Examiner News. Her feature writing on the arts has been published in The Villager, Hook Magazine, Valley Table Magazine, Edible Hudson Valley, Roll Magazine, Living@HomeCT, the Poughkeepsie Journal, The Stamford Advocate/Greenwich Time.