Rash Decisions (1)

With Evelyn, Buying Groceries

She is horizontal, hungover, and apparently

ticklish on the forearm--she never knew.

The room is white, wood-paneled,

and she believes slightly slanted--

definitely not well insulated.

He is smelly, bearded, and she can't

stop laughing even though he doesn't

seem to be getting out of her bed anytime soon.

And she has tons of things she needs to do.

Sundays are usually spent buying

groceries, drinking tea, laundry.

But he keeps her sheets warm and

her body so soft and smokin.

So they stay in her half-unpacked room,

her clothes on top of tilted drawers,

her books sprawled out all over the floor.

It's nothing and yet something even now,

months after his see ya round.

She puts a box of loose-leaf tea

in her shopping cart and asks me

what kind of detergent I use

and if I have written that chapter yet.

We walk with purpose

down the fluorescent aisles.

I slip and say the word that is

too vague to put in poems--

but isn't that what they're all about?

The falling in, the falling out--

that word she stopped believing in.

All she has to say on the matter--

It lasts as long as the song

that claims it lasts forever.