Why do people
come
over,
fling themselves on my couch
and croak
and quack about how sick they are?
Really.
There
is a bad cold here
making its rounds through the
houses
carried by messengers like these
I hand
them cans of chicken soup with rice
and urge them
to
GO AND TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES
(What I
really mean is: Don’t touch my couch! Don’t touch my cat! Bye
bye!)
But they want to talk
want to put their
sticky fingers on my Kleenex box
This being the Wild
West
people blow their noses with toilet paper
like that is a superior survival skill
to just breaking
down and buying
Kleenex with aloe in it
Their
noses
look like they’ve been chewed by rodents
So my Kleenex box
with aloe
is a very desirable
object
Cripes.
Could you
back-to-the-landers
occasionally visit the
store?
Okay, the real truth is:
when my first
friend arrived
white as snow
with unnaturally
red lips
I was still a nice person
healthy,
helpful
I gave her soup
cooked it for her on my
stove
exhorted her to stay on the couch
But
while she was lying there, as if dead,
In came my next
friend
here for the potluck
all
schmugly-faced
not taking off her hat or coat
because she was COLD
Announcing that people aren’t
recovering from this cold
for days, weeks!
Great! Tell me more!
have a fever, and pass the
butter!
the laws of biology are suspended in my house,
after all!
The next day
at the
café
a man with watery eyes
and a newly
deep voice
patted the seat next to them
“Sit by
ME!”
Right. In your DREAMS I’m gonna sit by you,
you leper.
And now, today, I have a cold
Damn!
And I want to go to the movie tonight
But
I can’t — can I?
Lisa Jones is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News
(hcn.org) in Paonia, Colorado, where the flu
reigns.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
