Slant Tales

I lived in a brownstone three flights up
on a cobblestone street in Boston,
eye-level with rooftops and telephone wires.
you could hear people living in the next
building over (one time I even heard
them making love).

my roommate was a cute girl smaller
than me with terrible hygiene.
she was oblivious in many ways but
especially in love.
she would stumble into the living room
every morning in a camisole and panties,
smoking a cigarette and looking for coffee,
and we’d sit together in silence
smoking and sipping before I’d head off to work
our only shared ritual
and even that was bad for our health.

I left once for a week and came back to find
her in the same position on the sofa,
not wearing pants and
ashing into a dish overflowing with butts,
a week’s worth of trash attracting
fruit flies in the kitchen.

by the time I moved out she
was already gone. she had
taken the radio I bought for
the shower and left a wooden
table that only had three
legs which she picked up on
the street the day we moved in.
the fact that she left that table upset me
more than if she had taken half of my belongings.