The Romantic - Jay Nebel
The Romantic
I’ve been to the movie about the flood where the boy and girl float
under the latticed bridges, miraculously still, their bodies only touching
from elbow to wrist, and somehow, they stay together
admist the wreckage of refrigerators and station wagons,
soggy stuffed animals, wooden houses, eyeless dolls
and picket fences that drift through a city, held together tenderly
as the ash of a cigarette. They survive, get married,
live happily for six months, never fight, make love
on the kitchen tile, until one morning a water logged greeting card
shows up on their doorstep, a heart felt fuck you
scratched on the inside. We find out he has cancer, only one day
to live, and we feel cheated as they spend the last hours feeding
the ducks on Laurelhurst Pond, because we have to return
to our ordinary lives, snapping your bare ass with a wet towel
on Halloween, or you splitting my lip months earlier
in a wrestling match. Or leaving me standing there
in a Home Depot parking lot wondering if you would ever
come back with our two Chihuahuas and the new barbecue loaded
into the backseat of the car, pissed because I paid too much attention
to the cashier, my marriage driving away with her hands
on the wheel, music blaring, the wind smashing her in the face.
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