My Neighbor Becky

for the most part
i get along with my neighbors.

hello.
how are you?
hot out, isn't it?

etc.
that sort of non invasive
chit chat
that goes nowhere.

just gets you from the car
into your house
without having to discuss

anything of importance.

but then there's Becky.
she's been putting notes on my
door for 15 years now

about the trash, about the dog,
about the stickers
on the car.

about how i shovel snow.

she smiles and waves
whenever i see her acting like
all is well.

she never signs her notes anymore,
but i recognize the handwriting
from the first manifesto she
pinned to my door when i first
move in.

she's old
and from what i heard
was engaged once

to adolf hitler, but she's one of
these mean people

that will never die. something about
the poison in her
veins keeps her alive.

she reminds me of the grandmother
in the story The Misfit
by Flannery O'conner.

"she would have been a good woman,
the misfit said, if only she had had a gun
to her head all her life."

i read the new note
and sigh in the heated air.
please double bag your trash
when you put it out at night.

the animals are getting into it.

and please remove that tread mill,
if it's yours, from the trash pile
too.

the trashmen will not take it.
you should not put heavy exercise
equipment
out on the curb like that.

i look at all the other porches
along the rows of houses.

i'm the only one with a note.
lord have mercy.

i've never owned a treadmill
in my life and i put the trash out
at 730 a.m.

i walk the note up to her house
and drop it on her porch
with three words written on it,
two being .....You Becky