crimes of passion

I think about passion and I think about anger, hate, the tearing of flesh. Romeo and Juliet, a slap in the face elegantly subtitled but so eloquent in the original French. I think, in exactly which of the seven stages of grieving do you pick up a semi-automatic weapon and shoot all the people in Garden City.

Christopher tells me that isn't in the seven stages at all, you have to endure all seven and then some. He tells me that is in the 20th stage. The French filmic slap is still coy enough to be textbook grief. Romeo was perhaps somewhere off the scale.

Christopher is the voice of reason. I squint towards him at the bar and try to imagine him trudging past the first stage of grief but can't. Just enough passion to get some traction on the new book but little more. He brings me a vodka and soda and I want to become him. I want to trudge casually past my erratic behaviour. I want to anchor myself somewhere in Mckissocks polite little stages. Somewhere within the realms of sanity. But perhaps I will just go on the meds again instead.