You are varied and undefinable. You are constrained only by the containers trying to make you conform. (You are, after all, a liquid.)

You never cease to amaze me with your seemingly endless flavor combinations. Chicken, beef, vegetable, mushroom…all are delightful in the knowledge that their common denominator is their subcategorization under your name – gravy.

Oh, to love someone as I love you! It is a bittersweet story with a twisted ending. The gravy boat is not an abyss. All good things must end.

Our love story stretches back through the years…I was young and naïve when we first met. I was uneducated about the ways of the world, and your creation remained a mystery. You graced the dinner table with your presence only during special holidays.

My first encounter with you was a revelation. I wanted you with a hunger that was previously unknown. I was positively yearning for you and your full-bodied flavor.

But alas! You remained an enigma, infrequently mentioned as a dinner possibility, and rarely seen. Thanksgiving became sacred ground, one where I would see how much gravy I could pour over mashed potatoes or rice stuffing before my family would notice.

Oh, how I wish I could have kept you a secret from the world! But you are too fair, too magnetic, too delicious not to share. The secret is out – you are my most favorite and beloved of the sauces, my most luscious and anticipated condiment.

You could pour yourself over salad greens and manage to make it work (I know, because I’ve tried). Your call is ethereal, like that of a siren. I am helpless and cannot resist. Nor do I want to.

People may scoff at you, calling you a peasant sauce. Well, they can enjoy their hollandaise and their velouté, their immaculate tomato or béchamel. Let them roll their eyes at your outward simplicity. I know the truth about you.

When I gaze into your depths, I see myself reflected in you (but only when the lighting is right). I see everything you are, from the freshly ground pepper to the knob of butter and flour that was your beginning. I see to the very heart of you, and I know you understand me.

You are beautiful in your silence. You are not wishy-washy, but strong and bold. You take courageous leaps as your delicate aroma wafts from the pan, while I pour you gently into your favorite home, the gravy boat.

You are not meticulous or demanding, high-strung or self-centered. You are sturdy and dependable (but not, of course, in the end-table kind of way, because no one wants to be compared to an end-table) and can always lift the dreariest of moods.

You are perfect in any weather, but as the days get progressively shorter and darker, your presence becomes even more luminous. You are the warmth that greets the family on a cold autumn evening, the delightful aroma waiting to be spooned onto a great pile of rice during the most frigid of winters.

You are, and forever will be, an indispensable piece of my heart.