Marianne Gambaro

Word Count 186

I guess it began before COVID

although COVID put everything under a microscope.

At yoga class where we met

the instructor introduced you as new in town.

Over tea after class we discovered

we were both aspiring writers,

our husbands were into photography

and we loved good food.

Some fun but nonmemorable times followed.

I was never comfortable

with your proclivity for gossip,

even about people I didn’t know.

I was horrified when you told me about caring

for your neighbor’s house while they were away

and going through their things because

Isn’t that what everyone does?

Did I really need to know

about the vibrator in their night-table drawer?

Since I had entrusted you with my key

when we were on vacation,

I changed my locks.

Your snarky remarks got increasingly snarkier.

When you crashed your car Christmas Day

and I drove an hour each way to rescue you

I was rewarded with a terse Thanks.

Not even lunch?

  or a lousy bottle of wine?

When COVID hit we Zoomed weekly

at first. Then bi-monthly.

Then stopped altogether because

we had nothing left to say.

Marianne’s poems and essays have been published in print and online journals including Mudfish, CALYX, Oberon Poetry Magazine, and The Naugatuck River Review. Her chapbook, Do NOT Stop for Hitchhikers, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her career as a journalist is often reflected in the narrative style of her poetry. A committed humane volunteer, she does enrichment with stray and injured cats at her regional animal shelter, socializing them and preparing them for adoption. She lives, writes, and gardens in verdant Western Massachusetts, with her photographer-husband and two feline muses.