She was a friend.
It’s good to have friends,
and hard come by these days.
My friends keep dying or
moving away.

She was younger than me, that’s ok.
Less chance of dying soon. She was
light and funny and happy all the time.
She had a big smile and infectious laugh.
We did countless coffees together. Then, came
the whispered secrets of the past. Incest,
beatings, psychological abuse.

But, she was coping. Coping. In therapy and doing well. Always thin, she admitted, with head
down, of some ‘eating problems.’ She came
to lunch. While I wolfed down a deli sandwich,
melon and two cups of tea, she daintily drank half a
cup of tea and a slice of melon. She wasn’t hungry.
Then, problems at home with her children and she
began ‘fasting’ for health.

She got thinner.
She began to look at me strangely. Then came the day
when I could see the crazy leaking out of the corners of
her eyes. Those big eyes. Beautiful. She had stopped
laughing and having fun. It became all about the food.

I knew I was losing her. Like a small island floating away into
the big ocean, I could feel her drifting away. I held out
my hand but she didn’t want to take it.

We weren’t friends anymore.
I had become the stranger, the enemy.
6/26
cew