Nikki
by james bezerra
Been thinking a lot
about death lately,
because one can only
write so much cloying poetry
about old girlfriends,
and drinking,
and I think
the existence of ghosts,
while wholly impractical -
though no less so
than that of angels -
would certainly explain a lot,
like who is using all of
our old pagers?
Our dial-up modems?
Who still buys crap
by calling the number
at the bottom the screen?
Or what is my old friend doing now?
The one who fussed too much
with her curly red hair?
Who had cancer twice
before 24?
And who beat it only once?
Where might she be now?
Because I always forget –
and am always surprised
to remember -
that she isn’t just sitting
in her mother’s house
knitting or playing with her hair.
So what is she up to now?
Because she can’t possibly still
be getting skinnier every day.
I tend to think of that
as just a phase she went through,
as we all tend to do
in our early 20s,
after all,
I had a really bad moustache
there for a while,
but I outgrew that.
Surely by now she’s gotten bored
with the whole dying-of-cancer thing.
I can’t picture her aging though.
Can’t imagine her cradling
the baby she always wanted.
Although – and how cliché is this? –
I do think I see her so frequently
out of the corner of my eye.
It’s because so many girls now
dye their hair that color,
like desert sun glinting off copper,
and so I always turn to look at them
and they always think
I’m some dirty old man
with a thing for redheads,
which –
of course -
I am,
but that’s not the point.
They make such lively ghosts
youth trapped in amber.
It makes me think she’s out there
somewhere, my friend,
bending beams of light
to bounce off ginger curls,
just to say hi.
.
.
.
