An Almost Completely Fictitious Poem.

i used to live below this couple
who didn’t know that i could 
hear them through the air vents,
and if they had known they maybe 
would have left some things unspoken,
or maybe they would have seen reason
to speak more,
but their tongues flew and their mouths 
spat sounds that i may not know if
it weren’t for his drinking and her 
nights out on the town, and if it weren’t
for both of their
running around.

my grandmother used to tell me that
one who eavesdrops will likely hear nothing
good about himself, but nobody ever talks about
me or my four-door sedan or the change
rattling in my pockets or the band i still wear
around my finger though my wife died two years
and three months ago.


but from my couch, instead, i listened to a hair dryer
hit the drywall, or an oven door slam shut, and 
i would have never called my wife those things
even if i thought that’s what she was.

my cat would sleep through all of this,
and probably he even slept through the 
fire that caused me to evacuate my apartment
late one night in october,
but i like to think he ran out and found a ladycat
in the city and they live in an alley that the 
homeless haven’t found yet, so they can be alone,
and i imagine he and his new little family is doing 
pretty well for itself.

and i imagine that man and that woman would be
doing pretty well for themselves, too,
but i know that she started that fire with a flick
of her wrist, and i know that he watched her
the whole damn time, and i think if they’d lived i’d
still be sitting on my couch listening to
him ask who richard is, and her pour his gin down
the sink, and wishing to myself they would not
go to bed angry,
but i know they did because i never heard them 
make up once,


and i think that would have been so nice that 
i might have closed my side of the air vent
just to let them have something
all to themselves.