Lyndie by Adam Parry

 

Lyndie.

 

She has COPD now

and doesn’t call me these days,

but she always, always made me laugh and

I wonder:

Does she have someone

to laugh at her jokes

as she smokes her fruit-flavoured tobacco?

 

She used to look like

Paula Yates and her

white witch boyfriend looked like

Michael Hutchins.

He never made me laugh.

Thinking of her I smell the fruit-flavoured

tobacco that almost made want to throw up

when I took a drag.

 

Do you like that? She asked, pointing

at a picture and I didn’t want to say I did

when I didn’t, but I said yes anyway

when it was crap.

 

She always had cats.

Nala would, like an Olympic gymnast,

somehow

jump up to the top of the tall bookcase

as though merely stepping over a puddle

on Urquhart Road.

 

Seems so long ago doesn’t it?

And she says yes as if she doesn’t

want to be sad and goes and makes

a pizza and would make me

eat it all.

Seems so long ago now doesn’t it?

But, she doesn’t answer.

 

When I ring she doesn’t answer.

She has COPD now and I

wonder if she’s dead so I hang up,

sick of friends dying on me

so selfishly.

 

But, by the Bay she cuts up

tomatoes and peppers,

onions and lettuce

Original 106 on in the background

and she sings along.