Thursday, January 06, 2005

That Cop she was All Dressed in Blue

I counted five police cars tonight. The officers sitting in the dark parked in some empty parking lot. Strange how elated I am when I pass them and they don’t come to life with flashing red and blue lights, as if I’ve discovered a secret to tricking the authorities by obeying the law. You see, I may be going the speed limit now but I’ve don’t always. I’ve run through stop signs, made illegal U turns, I’ve even blown through a toll without paying.

But I make a pretty convincing law abiding citizen at that moment.

This place is saturated with memories and most of them include him as if the most recent two years opaquely overlay the previous seventeen. I drive and he might as well be in the passenger seat, silent and sulking as I pass the city.

And my mind calls up the memory of taste in my mouth: rank from sweat, spittle, and sour skittles.

And it’s like a bad cold, I need to allow myself to sink into it. Sleep for 14 hours, drink plenty of fluids or you’ll certainly end up becoming intimately acquainted with the toilet at 3 a.m., a wad of tissues clutched in your fist.

Instead, this way maybe I can wake and kick off the covers to a gray Berkeley winter.

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