Prayers, Portraits, Post-Its (18)

A Street in Kelowna

Anytime of the day or night but especially
after 2 a.m. we could get
into it:
“You piece of shit you're not crazy
you're just using that as an excuse
to see HER.”
“That's an exaggeration.”
“Who sat beside you two days THE OTHER
time you OD'd and right after your
discharge you buy her a fucking bathing suit?”
“That was before.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“After you.”
And then there were the
gestures accompanying this soundtrack:
a fist through a cabinet door
(mine)
ASSHOLE painted in 3-foot-high dripping
red acrylic on a car (hers)
slammed doors shattered plates shredded letters
(mine and hers).
She said she could never decide
if I was plain crazy or crazy
like a fox, though I maintained
the answer was always both
for everybody
she kept looking for traces
of sanity, i.e. guilt,
it was the last thing
we had left to decide
and my competency hearing
dragged on far longer than
was wise.
I think the craziest thing she ever
saw me do was on a street in Kelowna,
10 years and a thousand miles from
where we'd been together;
she saw me coming and bundled
her little girl across the street
to keep her from meeting me
and I pulled up short and
acted surprised.