My Long Over Due CD and the Meth Head

My dog barked.

He barks when he hears the front gate.

I was waiting for my new CD to arrive.

It was all kinds of overdue.

I opened the front door to see a chick standing there,

reaching up to my electricity metre.

What are you doing? I asked.

Re-setting your metre, she replied.

Why? I asked.

For testing, she said.

I wondered what that meant, testing,

as she turned and left through the front gate.

I caught sight of what she had in her hands,

a package, and old letters.

A red and yellow envelope?

That package looked like what my CD would come in.

Why was the skin on her face so blotchy?

Was she the homeless chick from the squat over Gertrude Street?

I’d watched her smoke her glass pipe, when walking my dogs,

hardly concealing what she was doing from those who could see.

I put on shoes and walked up Gertrude Street,

there she was standing over her dirty bedding.

I watched her like a spy, from across the road.

She headed down the next side street and fiddle with the nun’s electricity metre.

After an inordinate amount of time, when I feared for the sisters, 

I saw her go, to the next house, and the next house, and the next house.

I crossed Gertrude Street like a secret agent,

I went through her dirty bedding, duvet, sheets, blankets.

There were letters from all sorts of local addresses,

made me think she had my package, even if I couldn’t see it.

I called the non-emergency police line.

After I explained what she was doing, they patched me through to the emergency line.

The police asked if I thought the person was on drugs?

The police told me not to approach her, and to stay safe.

After much explaining, which the police seemed to find hard to follow,

they said they would send a car.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I put my shoes back on and headed out again.

The first thing I saw was a police car, turning up the wrong street.

I headed off to find her, and there she was,

in the next street, fiddling with electricity metres on the houses there.

Oh, what can you do, I thought?

And I went home and closed the door.

I told myself, that she was probably so juiced up at those electricity metres,

that she thought she was flying The Enterprise, or saving the world from immanent destruction.

I have walked past since, and seen her always comfortably asleep in her dirty bed,

there in front of the closed down aboriginal gym.

I have scoured her squat for the red and yellow tell tale signs,

of postal packaging, each time I have walked past, but none has ever been visible.

Each time I have regretted not doing a more thorough search for my CD,

convinced she had it, and had pawned it for meth.

Today, my long lost CD finally arrived, many days overdue,

My dog barked when the postie rang my door bell.

I was walking up Gertrude Street in the afternoon, and the homeless chick

was awake in her bed, she looked at me and smiled, and I smiled back.