A night in county lockup after fucking on the kale display

I bummed a vape
pen that Jenny  
had stashed in her  
bra and waited for  
someone to post bail  
 
I grinned at the list of  
charges read that morning:  
Assault  
Battery  
Indecent exposure  
Lewd and lascivious behavior  
on a Whole Foods  
kale display,  
 
I handed the vape back  
to Penny.  
Jenny?  
Whatever.  
The chick  
in here with me.  
She got drunk  
and peed in public.  
 
Me.  
I was sober.  
First time all week.  
 
When you played  
jump rope  
with my guts  
I promised to  
forget you  
as fast as possible,  
and the damp spot  
between my legs  
seems to indicate  
it’s been  
pretty damn fast.  
 
Pretty damn fast.  
 
(another lie)  
 
I lash out  
when wounded,  
and the fact my intestines  
are still wriggling  
around like  
beheaded serpents  
on this  
manky-ass floor  
has me  
extra  
viscous,  
 
because  
I can’t  
forget  
you.  
 
I fucking can’t.  
Goddamn you  
Goddamn you  
 
So instead,  
 
I’m erasing you.  
 
e  r  a  s  i  n  g   y o u  
 
Wiping you out like  
sidewalk chalk  
in a monsoon.  
 
Giving away your shit,  
with ebullient  
pomp and fanfare,  
so my hippocampus  
retrieves these  
memory prompts  
as celebrations  
that aren’t  
you.  
 
Giving.  
Away.  
Every goddamn thing  
that was yours,  
 
and baby  
you had  
(me)  
it  
all  
 
So when I see  
an alien landscape  
in a sunrise,  
when it rolls off  
of my tongue like  
a bite of strawberry  
from your mouth;  
when the intimacies  
that only existed  
in a pale haze  
after a dark summer  
between us  
pop up in a  
crazed maelstrom of  
(pleasemakeitstopmakeitstop)  
 
pain…  
 
I give it to  
someone else.  
 
You had  
a lot of shit,  
and there are  
boxes  
everyfuckingwhere;    
it’s taking  
more time  
than expected,  
   
but I’m nothing if not  
a perfectionist.  
 
And it hurt,  
god it hurt,  
seeing  
your  
name  
as I flipped  
through the past  
and I didn’t know  
how to give that away.  
 
Until I saw the produce  
manager’s name tag.  
 
So on the downside,  
I can’t shop at Whole Foods  
for a thousand years.  
 
But that’s the only fucking downside  
 
Your name,  
is now  
just a record,  
just a docket number,  
just a funny story,  
of my brief  
incarceration.  
 
Nothing more.  
 
The bailiff calls me.  
Bail’s been made.  
 
I pick my miasmic pile  
of bowel  
off the painted floor  
and give  
Jenny a kiss  
on the way out.