We had hitchhiked to Oslo, Norway,
from the Baltic Coast,
to see Edvard Munch's paintings

In the afternoon
she tore through a downtown bookstore
in her brown leather coat,
purchasing an expensive, large book
with Pablo Picasso illustrations,
and I bought a book with Bob Dylan lyrics

It was April 1976, she was just eighteen, I twenty-seven

Drifting back to our cheap, sloppy hotel,
we made up a story along the sidewalk,
that we played out:

She was a whore and I a needy poet,
giving her an offer,
till we climbed the stairs to the room,
stripping ourselves naked as fast we could,
giving ourselves our due,
the old bed screeching like a sick cat vomiting;
the whole scene like something out of a post-war film
in Paris

Next day, hitchhiking back to Sweden
we got stuck in Örebro,
finding a grey hotel room,
where we fell asleep instantly

Next morning we had one of our frequent hot quarrels
about all and nothing,
and I up and left her,
hopping a train to Stockholm
and then a local back down to Gnesta,
hitchhiking the last miles back to our 8-room house
on a big Estate near the village of Stjernehof
on a tourist bus with a lonely driver and no passengers

She was already back there,
and I fucked her madly from behind
on the floor in the main room,
while she threw up all over the carpet
and had spiritual hallucinations
of netherworlds