Does Maude Have Friends? (A Poem in Fifteen Tweets)
Raphael Bob-Waksberg

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 Does Marge have friends?

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 (a poem in fifteen tweets)

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 Who are Marge’s friends? Is Helen Lovejoy a friend? Sarah Wiggum? Agnes Skinner?

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 To whom does Marge spill her secrets over coffee on cold days? Who laughs at Marge’s jokes? Who knows Marge, truly and well?

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 Who tells Marge to leave the brute, knowing she won’t? “You don’t have to stay. You deserve so much more.”

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 Who, on a morning walk, sees a tall blue bush, texts a photo to Marge, “this made me think of you”? Surely not Lenny, or Kirk or Luann.

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 Did Marge mourn for Maude Flanders? Late nights, at the kitchen table, staring at her own hands. Is she haunted still by her absence?

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 Does she see in her late neighbor a cautionary tale? Seldom-remembered, semi-anonymous Maude — could this fate too befall Marge?

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 Perhaps, once at a summer barbecue, when both were still alive, Maude grabbed Marge’s hand under the table and held tight.

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 What prompted this sudden connection, this sudden expression of— what was it, warmth?

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 The two weren’t close— acquaintances, sure, had they ever even hugged?

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And yet here they were, holding hands, silently, secretly, while their children shrieked and their husbands grilled the hot dogs.

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One night, Marge couldn’t sleep, the linens, hung to dry in the yard, flapping in the wind with unprecedented accent.

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Marge wandered into the night, a fleck of yellow in a blanket of white stars, and she felt, as she often did, alone.

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 Marge felt the sharp grass on her feet, the breeze on her face. Over the fence she saw Maude, pale as a sheet, her eyes wet with tears.

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 Marge looked to her— “Maude?” and Maude shook her head.

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And Maude whispered this: “It’s not the calm before the storm that frightens me. It’s the calm that follows.”