I could hear her behind me,
her soft cough cut through the hard staccato applause of 300 fingers working quickly across keyboards
Suddenly I hated that cough
she always coughed, and always blamed it on the weather
I'll admit, the weather here ain't so hot
but 7 months of coughing isn't the weather, it's the cigarettes

it was mostly like that with her
if it went wrong, it wasn't something she was doing
but something someone was doing to her
that's mostly why we stopped talking
why I stopped talking to her really
I hated hearing about her suffering

I asked her about it once
in this case it was, why do you buy presents for your friends
when you can barely afford food?
She said, that's just the way I am, I'm generous, I can't help it
I thought to myself, that's stupid
and then I told her, that's stupid
She said, I know, but I can't do anything about it
then laughed like she wasn't hungry
and hadn't been surviving on bread and Marmite for three days

I never did hear her leave
she didn't talk to me when she did
but she had gone, and taken her cough with her
and for that I was grateful

AcB 04.26.01