Schaghticoke

I never got a good photo of him.
Over two months,
I got only body parts
dismembered from each other.
Even though they were behind
unstained glass,
the listless traffic cops filtered all the life out
of even a torso wrapped in a plaid shirt.

The distance made distortion echo,
(6.6 hours and 624 kilometers of it)
and there was only so much I could take.
Between two kidneys on the same side,
a propensity to do stupid things,
the two broken ribs,
the dislocated shoulder,
and the blackened eye that stopped seeing me at all—
(I must remember to remind him:
a child with blond hair and green eyes
sits with her sandwich, the crusts cut off.
I do not want her.
I do not want her.)

—these were simply hiccups.
Mistakes, baby, that he didn’t mean.
But I didn’t know how he would end it.
I didn’t know he was driving drunk.