Tonight,
the drive took longer
than expected.

I was just going to the store
for four dollar whiskey.

We have argued for some time now,
and hold our breaths
when we crunch our food
in the morning.

We work: 9-5; and come home to laze
away from each other,
or to roar
about unkept promises
in the shared den;

We work: 9-5; and come home to laze;
to glisten in the beedled glow
of TVs
in separate rooms,
on separate couches,
on separate floors.

I have faltered,
and you have quoted.

I needed to get out of the house
because we have worked too hard
to shake it;
and screaming is a discomfort
we can bare
and that's no good
I've realized lately.

And the highway,
with its litany of bruises
and the brutality of a billion
dandelion reflectors
seemed like a blackening pavilion
for catharsis.

There  was no one beside me;
the roadway pummeled
beneath.

It was a terrible silence.

I screamed in the ***** odor of night,
and whistled
in the hushing door;

paid for my little bottle of godliness
and took hard swigs
in a ****-laundered parking lot
of an abandoned Food Lion.

Crabgress crept up through the concrete--
breaking and burdening--
and drifted in suffocating meadows.

The empty grocery store has an opaque facade
and a shimmering tiny lion;
I am home.