I’m on the phone with Jade.
She’s washing her dishes;
I’m popping hazelnuts.
My sounds mix with hers:
Shells cracking; water running.
Jade’s iguanas are dead,
And she is telling me about it.
I just had a feeling that morning,
She says, I got up… and everything
Felt so heavy. I don’t know what to say
To that. I try to feel what she must’ve felt,
But the hazelnuts break my concentration.
They were lying side by side, like they knew,
She says, these two little dry green things.
Like iguana jerky, I say, and laugh out loud.
You asshole, she says, I’m hanging up.
And then she starts laughing, hysterically.
I hear her drop a dish back into the suds.
I picture her soapy pale hands on her hips;
The phone is caught between her head
And her left shoulder; Beautiful.
Thanks man, she finally says, I needed that.
You got it, I say; We hang up.
That night, as I lay in bed, thoughts pop in and out.
Suddenly, I see it clearly: millions of iguanas, heaven-bound;
Their little green souls fleeing their dry little bodies,
Flying far, far and away, the true lounge lizards.