Peggy

 

A woman with hair smokes at the dining table.
it is 6pm in June and the light is coming in on her 
and the table and the tea towels like an olympic bronze placement.

it’s Hollywood, if you’re lucky.
The phone rings,
she shuffles her slippers across the dine-in-you-know-what and towards the phone,

Peggy: “Hello?”
Caller: “Hello?”
Peggy: “Yes?”
Caller: “Who is this?”
Peggy: “Um,” blinking, “who are you trying to reach?”
Caller: “What number is this?”
Peggy: “What number are you trying to reach?”
Caller: “I don’t know”
Peggy: “Well, I think you have the wrong number.”
Caller: “Do I?”
Peggy: “It happens. Take it easy!”

she hangs up the phone,
it rings again, ignored.
Sugar is hydroscopic, so my concern is that in time it will actually pull water out of the filling. The extraction begins:

Three large men in gloves come knocking on the door,
carrying a package: large, empty.

They kidnap her, of course.

Her toothbrush weeps, and one slipper that was left behind in all the commotion sighs to itself in relief.

The obituary is to follow, after a short investigation,
“When we lost Peggy, we lost a woman of grace, dignity, and love. She carried her friends with  her in her loyal heart and they carried her likewise. She wasn’t a woman of many words but the  words she spoke were known to be insightful, hilarious, and full of empathy. She will never be forgotten. Certainty not by the mailman, panting behind polyester, holding his delivery low, beet red and bothered. Nor will she be forgotten by her toilet, or mirrors, or loving phone. Nor her trusty spatula — cold metal, longing for a hot flip every now and then. Rest in peace.”




Montana Thomas is a poet and artist based in New York.