title taken from the song “Grounds for Divorce” by the band Elbow

In the city I killed the bugs because it felt
like they were trespassers. In the desert I’m the one
who doesn’t belong. Everything around me is tracking
my pace.

Now I keep an iceberg container and a piece of mail
to trap and free them out in the dirt where they belong. 

I used to carry bags of empty liquor bottles to the dumpster
behind the neighborhood bar, late at night 
while my wife slept.

She used to watch me pour my first
before she brushed her teeth. I had her convinced I rarely
poured a fifth.

At the bar I heard jokers all the time, saying
they didn’t have any kids out there that they knew about.
They never joined any search parties.

When I thought about peer pressure I thought about high school.
Now I know only the label suggests a legal limit and a drinking age.
Too much is something a bartender tells you, not something
an adult concedes.

In the alley I watched the drunks evict the beer along the sidewalks
out both ends. In the desert, I see the homes birds build
in the saguaro limbs and think

of all the empty bottles they could hold, all the liquor
their stems could reserve
for dryer days.