My Facebook Friend

Stephen F.Cooper II

A face in a square
With a smile on my screen
By punching in a word or two
She became my friend
She told me she lived in Spain
I live in Germany, I replied.
We chatted twenty-four hours
Round the clock; all my little dollars went.
Madly in love I fell
With the face and place
All day I imagined my Facebook friend
And I roaming in chains of trains
The magnificent streets of Barcelona
Buying tickets for two
To have fun at the Camp Nou
For she had already told me
She was a personal friend of Messi.
Alas! After a year or so
While cooling off in the shade
Of a gigantic plum tree on a very hot day
Then in plantain chip slippers
Came my Facebook friend, sweating
And chewing roasted cassava in one hand
With a bag of Aqualife in the other.
Her feet were as dusty as a refugee
Who had walked for miles
And from the look of things
She seemed hungrier than I
For she bit the cassava with all her might
So I buried my face in my palms
And lamented inwardly:
Germany and Spain have migrated
From Europe to Liberia in Africa.
Thence the chat continued
But this time her little dollars went.