Probation

The cheap dropped ceiling jumped like a pot-lid boiling when our upstairs neighbor chased his girl that winter. Falling out of summer’s skimpy tops she’d want our phone. Her plush lips creased. Not exactly blonde, but luteous , we thought, pleased the right word was there for that shade of slightly slutty mermaid. Wincing, we’d hear him punch along the floor on crutch- es, a giant bat trying to mince a mayfly. Sex and Violence you called them; Blondie with Dagwood on crystal meth, I’d tell our friends over dinners stewed in noise. Even his truck cowed. Black, smoked glass, outsized wheels flaunted like chrome knuckles we shrank from, ducked, afraid we’d find her later, knocking at our door. Some nights we waited through like captured prey. To you I’d turn in bed, saying the furtive words against your back, I love ... You’d stroke my hair, or hip, all our years the same flip crack, I do , too .