Nikki.

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.

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