Patti and Me and Calgary

We both bought Yamaha guitars

in high school, played Neil Young songs -

I held the melody as Patti harmonized.

I had loved her since grade nine when

we compared our platform Mary Janes

on the first day of school. Patti was why

I love women with great asses and legs.

With nothing to do after graduation,

we decided to move out west.

Calgary was going through its own growing

pains, it ached and confused its residents

as it pivoted from a cow town

to economic hub with an influx of oil money.

We arrived in our wide legged jeans,

capped sleeve t-shirts, Walkmans

and cookie tin of cassette tapes.

Stepping around two drunk men with matted

black hair, threadbare shirts, punctured cans

of Lysol lying beside them, we walked up

to Jeff’s beaten down four-plex in the slums

near the stampede ground.

He showed us his apartment with its

plywood couch, third-hand kitchen set,

gave us his brown stained bed to share.

He was a practicing Bahai, never masturbated,

considered himself a music guru

introducing me to Patti Smith and Kate Bush.

Steve and Brian lived in the lower left apartment,

slightly bearded, still pining for their mothers’

Sunday dinners. An invisible prostitute worked below us.

We got jobs, minimum-wage - heated up

pre-cooked breaded chicken on a gas stove,

ate corn out of the can, macaroni and cheese -

having pushed the grocery cart across

the railroad tracks, the extent of our wealth.

On sunny weekends, Patti and I wore our bikinis,

lay in the park beside the Bow River.

She smiled at the whistles and catcalls

from guys passing by, as if I wasn’t with her.

At night, neighbors gathered to drop acid and drink

while Patti slow danced with Brian

who hanged himself one Sunday night.

I had willed his death secretly,

lying next to her each night, hoping

she would turn to me once he was gone.

She quit her job, kissed me once on the lips,

gave me a gold necklace, arranged a drive

to the airport from a pockmarked neighbor.

Her mother convinced her to come home

and so, she never saw the turning of the leaves,

first snowfall on the Rockies.