One of the Ways We Were

Jealousy schooled her

with unrelenting lessons

which compelled my friend

to perceive false meaning

in spoken, written, imagined

words, gestures, departures,

growls, grunts, and smiles.

She and I would try

to outdrink her obsessions.

Enough Scotch would turn

us blowsy, irate, defiant,

heavy with bleak certainty

that all men should go to hell

and that we’d be dead by thirty.