Cherry Pie

I meet this charming southern belle on
a dating site called

daisydukes.com. well not actually
meet her, but

we do the email, texting thing
ad nauseum.
for all I know she could be a freckled
face
teenage boy in his mother's basement

with the door closed.

but we hit if off just the same.

she tells me that if she lived closer,
she'd be all over me

like a chicken on a june bug.
I make a note to look up what a june
bug is.

I know my bugs, but june bug is a new one.

so how are things down south, I ask her.

and she says. things haven't been the same
since the northerners
began their war of aggression
on us.

I tell her, that was a long time ago.
a couple of hundred years. I try to do
the math in my head, but give up.

my daddy says that the south will rise again.
my nickname is dixie, she tells me.
they all sing Dixie for my birthday
instead of the usual happy birthday song.

and by the way, I don't mean any offense,
but Abraham Lincoln wasn't all that!

he had nothing on Jefferson Davis or Bobby Lee.

I don't want to get bogged down
into a political discussion
with her, so I move on
to talking about her pie making skills.

your profile says that you make a mean
cherry pie, I tell her. is that true?
I like that one picture of you holding it
up at the picnic table.

sure nuff, she says. I won the blue ribbon
four years in a row, although I got
beat last year by betty jean mulberry, that tramp
from Atlanta.

you should have seen what she was wearing,
i'm telling you it left no room for imagination.
them judges weren't salivating over her pie,
mind you.

well, if we ever get the chance to meet, maybe
I can sample a slice of your award winning pie.

it would be my pleasure, she says.
i'll bake a whole one just for you.
special, just for you sweetie.
maybe we could meet at the apple butter
festival this year in Winchester?

sure, I tell her. why not.

I like to enter my jams and jellies in their
contests
and my daddy likes to sell his wooden
bowls and big salad forks and spoons
at the festival. he whittles
them out of trees stumps that he finds
in the woods when he's out
possum hunting.
people just
love them wooden bowls.

sounds like a plan, I tell her.
I could use a new bowl.

well, I have to go now, she says.
one of our cows got loose down on the main
road
and I have to go fetch her.

toodle loo sweet potato. you behave
until we meet. followed by six heart emojis,
a dixie flag and a tiny cherry pie.