Deb Curreen Author

I'm on another night out, in the local cafe, with my bestie, sipping wine, nibbling nibbles, missing a mate, lamenting her absence, scorning her loss, wondering what went wrong, with her. But She did post something that was private, about us, set to public "When it comes to friends, it's not all wine and roses, carrot cakes  and drunken choruses on a floating boat in the harbour," my Bestie said. "Sometimes pots get thrown, flowers die and the wine gives you a bloody headache." "The boat makes you seasick and there are sharks in the harbour," I offer, as I am pouring her more sparkling wine. Rose, the pink stuff, meant for holidays and chatty talk with "the girls". Not for funerals, and certainly not for a friend who posted something private, set to public "Babes can  be bitches," a stranger from another table chimed in. We looked askance at this someone new. She drank red. Serious about life then, or worked too hard, trying to

Old friends is a place, in your heart, like battered suitcases, carried from town to town, to home and back. Full of pictures, laughter, sad times and wine with crackers, the tears from hard days and nights.   We carry old friends, never leaving them behind or in a dumpster, tied up in plastic sacks, driven away from and never looking back. We save that for enemies. Old friends come with us, wrapped carefully like precious bone china, stored in the cupboards of our heart and clearly labelled, Fragile.   One day we find them again, and we bring them out to wine and dine with again. We remember, oh we remember and it’s still too funny but not sad, well a bit. We are grateful that we lived, to watch another sun set, over another meal together. Sitting on the suitcases of our lives, unwrapping the precious and the fragile, comforted by the familiar, sharing the dust of lives thoroughly lived.

I swim in the waters of friendship,  letting their kindness wash o ver me, drinking the praise, eating the mem o ries, exquisite m o rse l s that I keep in a trinket b o x beside my bed-  la Familia What a bun fight at every Christmas, missed birthdays and never a call when I need y o u,  la Familia But still that bl o o d it sticks I find puddles in my kitchen, dr o ps in the trinket b o x, tang l ed in my hair, smeared  o n the wa l l s  o f my s o u l then s ometimes, the twain meet  Gentle  rivers meet the   o ceans on a quiet day, fresh water swirling into briny waves...la Familia...salt and light H20 meets plasma, night kisses day and sometimes the two become one. But not for long, la Familia with swords drawn, duels at dawn, bloody mess and mothers cry wet tears  as the clouds pull the ocean away from the river, memories wash out to sea and friends don't look back. Blood is no longer thicker than the waters that have become as bitter as Mara, while friends drink wine, white