Best Friends by Miriam Weinstein

1

Whose idea was it to open that new box of felt tip
Magic Markers?  I yanked out the red one, Sally pulled
at the blue one, then, all the markers slid
onto the floor of the Ladies Room, and in a frenzy

of fun we decorated the toilet stalls: Sally loves Joey
with a big red heart around the letters and an arrow
piercing it.  True Love with an identical design.
Oblivious to the commotion we caused,

who heard the door fly open, who saw the uniformed
clerk enter.  Marched up stairs to the manager, told:
Actions have consequences. Mom, so ashamed,
I never expected such behavior from you.

It was clear Sally was the problem.
Actions have consequences buzzed like an angry
bee all night long.  Saturday morning at Woolworth’s,
cleaning supplies in hand paid for with next week’s

allowance money, we scrubbed the entire
bathroom, all signs of our pre-teen love

gone.

2

Sally went on to meet trouble.  With boys,
with alcohol, with work as a stripper

at a bar across town. Sally went on to forget
actions have consequences. Plagued

with an untethered temper, she turned friends
and fellow workers to foes; plagued

with untreated mental illness, she fueled fires
in her family.  When Sally took unpaid

leave to care for her terminally ill mother,
she was terminated.  Sally flared, raged

out of control and plunged.  Fifty dollars left,
she told me last week.  Eligible for disability,

she never applied, eligible for social security,
she’s clueless what to do.  Food stamps 

won’t pay for toilet paper.

Awake before dawn I see Sally
homeless and on the street.  Shards

of glass surround her feet.

Miriam Weinstein has had poems published in the anthology The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home published by Holy Cow Press, The Chinook Book, and “The Quotable”, Issue 11: Memory.

She is a recent graduate of the Loft Literary Center (Minneapolis, MN) two-year apprenticeship program in poetry and her mentor was Jude Nutter.