ROBERT MONTANO

My wife . . .

 

. . . she gave her old clothes to a local church . . .
she knew the mailman’s birthday . . .
she gave to UNICEF . . .
she sent passionate faxes to elected officials . . .
she knew the first twelve Shakespeare sonnets by heart . . .
she said good-bye to toll booth people . . .
“bye-bye toll booth person!” . . .
she returned her library books on time . . .
she visited her eternal grandmother every faithful summer . . .
the old woman’s one remaining pleasure . . .
incontinent, toothless, unhappy . . .
connecting her granddaughter, through endlessly repeated
anecdotes, to the history written in her blood . . .

 

. . . she swore she’d buy herself a gun and shoot herself in the
head before she’d put up with an old age like this . . .
we planned to get ancient together and do the joint-suicide
thing . . .

 

. . . but there was a guy . . .

 

. . . a guy who washes car windows in front of the bank in our
neighborhood . . .
young guy . . .
filthy . . .
heroin . . .
always had a skateboard . . .
she’d drive up to the bank . . .
give him a dollar to clean the windshields . . .

. . . they’d hang out and talk . . .
they did this every Saturday morning . . .
he’s very good-looking . . .
despite the filth . . .

 

. . . she used to shoot up, so she understood . . .
I thought they were in love . . .
they had “a thing” . . .
I waited in the car as they laughed . . .
she once gave him a twenty, got in the car, crying . . .
she said, “I just heard the saddest story” . . .

 

. . . his new tattoo . . .
I swore it was her name surrounded by a crown of thorns . . .
the woman he couldn’t have . . .
I wanted to kill this man . . .
he was pathetic . . .
smelled like a urinal . . .
she got too close to him . . .
I didn’t want his clothes to brush her clothes . . .
came home one day . . .
there he is in the kitchen . . .
merrily drinking coffee . . .
he’s talking to her about movies . . .
big fan of Hitchcock . . .
what the fuck is going on here? . . .
I wanted to unwind . . .
I’m stuck with this putrid drug user in my kitchen pontificat-
ing about Strangers on a Train! . . .

 

. . . we fought about it that night . . .
I told her: “I come home . . .
I can’t even talk to you
because this addict is monopolizing you . . .
all I want is equal rights here!” . . .
she said, “I already know what you’re going to tell me” . . .
I stare at her . . .
“I bore you? . . .
is that it?” . . .
“no,” she said quickly . . .
I didn’t even stay in bed to hear more . . .
she said, “these people need me” . . .
“I don’t need you?” . . .
she said, “not in the same way” . . .
“honey, I need you in profound ways” . . .
she said, “yes, I know” . . .
“you’re not going to save this man” . . .

 

. . . I couldn’t stop imagining them together . . .
I imagined them sharing a cardboard box . . .
they do it on rusted mattresses . . .
passion heightened by rusted mattress spikes stabbing their
naked butts . . .
in fact, pain is the goal . . .

 

. . . I imagined they road skateboards together . . .
panhandling in front of our house . . .
all our friends staring at her . . .
and she’d look and sound happier with him than she ever
looked and sounded with me . . .
beneath the layers of traffic soot and sidewalk dirt her eyes were
full of wisdom and fulfillment and absolute freedom . . .
the freedom only vaguely imagined by the housebound . . .
freedom to say “fuck you” . . .
to stare at the drivers waiting for the light to change . . .
she’d challenge them: “hey you in the Lexus, are you moral?
empathic? . . .
you think you are . . .

you tell your children you are . . .
in your prayers you boast that you are . . .
yet here I am . . .
LOOK AT ME . . .
I’m staring into the deepest tunnels of your heart and I’m not
seeing shit . . .
you want me gone . . .
you hope I fall off the edge of the known world . . .
fall painlessly into oblivion while you drive to your
appointments” . . .

 

. . . she wanted that power . . .
and that power was something she could only get from him . . .

 

. . . then he disappeared . . .

 

. . . after that we would drive together . . .
anywhere . . .
didn’t matter . . .
there they were . . .
like an army of vampires, bloodless, in their rags and filth . . .
they knew about her . . .
they sought her out . . .
she radiated goodness and they wanted it . . .
they wanted to drink from her kindness like it was an ancient
tribal river . . .
to suck her down into their limbs . . .
to own her . . .

 

. . . my wife . . .
actually began to disappear in front of my eyes . . .
I watched helpless as she gave away scraps of herself . . .
first the excess . . .
then the vital tissues . . .

until she disappeared completely from my sight . . .
down into the tortured piranha pit of the homeless . . .

 

. . . away from me . . .
happy . . .
alive . . .
and finally at home.