My new neighbor helped me
make Thanksgiving dinner
the year I was first alone.

It’s impossible to forget
such a kindness–
it enters us somehow,
becomes one with the bloodstream,
breathes with us,
in and out,

absorbs into the lining
of the lungs, attaches to our blood
cells, flows through the scarlet-lined
arteries into the tingling capillaries,
pumped by the beating red
of the heart.