The Party

I don't care if nobody under forty can hang a door properly.

I'm six and I'm bored.

In the kitchen Lavada is plucking a turkey who looks crumpled and turned inside out He's full of holes.

I throw my skinny arms in the air as far as my bones will let them go and giggle.

It's ten years to Lavada's heart attack and sixty to mine.

Black overweight Lavada tucks a feather in her hair and we dance, her triceps wobblillg like charred wattles.

We laugh until our jawbones sting as if we'd drunk mossy cold, rust-flecked water from the bottom of the well.