For Elaine,

Who Once Crocheted A Bookmark For Me That Just Said “F**K”

by Sarah Reddick – from The Local Voice #148

Clink of ice cubes colliding
with frosted glasses.
Notes of some old song I knew intimately
but couldn’t place.
Grass, mid-summer green, bent
over with the weight of droplets
spraying from a hidden sprinkler.
She splashed me when she hit the cool
aqua of the pool, her bulky body
graceful somehow.
She could float on her back for hours,
she could even sleep that way,
arms and legs spread,
a starfish in a black tank suit.
Her phone rang, vibrating
the glass topped table.
She answered it dripping wet,
in the middle
of a story she was telling me.
She spoke briefly before hanging up.
She said, I haven’t talked to
her in twenty years,
but I have company. I’ll call her back.
She winked at me and laughed,
a deep laugh,
a smoker’s laugh.
She died suddenly a few months later.
I smashed things while sobbing, an act
of grieving that she would
have scoffed at.
She hated dramatics.
But I have this day frozen, crystalline,
and I still wonder if she ever called
her long lost friend.