I miss everyone
who has ever been
anything to me
and I wonder
if I am ever still
anything
to you
-
witnesses
To everyone who showed
and thus committed
with the two of us
on that day
to be there
for the both of us
and then
did nothing
except show up
to collect her things
and some of mine
you
you are as rotten
as they come
and no more rotten
than as rotten as me
and to my parents
who drove
some 700 miles
twice
I wonder
if you can feel it
at all
the way that I do
the way
effort never correlates
with outcomes
quite the way one wants
never quite the way
you told me to trust
that it would.and to you
on a starry throne reclined
your heel
and our necks
on every continent
barely men
what can we say except
to hell
we go
for sin
unshown. -
why you shouldn’t criticize poems someone else says they like
just celebrate
that in its reading
this person’s need
for being seen
has been metyou must do nothing now
to compromise this
for themand for you
when you are needing to be seen
you will always be free
to find a poem
no one else likes
and you will both be better for it -
shoe string beautifully
loved beautifully
and she too
__________beautifully
and whatever got undone
did it’s job
like a shoe string never meaning to stay so
knotted
we wrapped up beautifully
and unwound__________ten years
of string tightening
never fraying just
strangling
________and marriage counseling
and the heroin of believing
we could last forever
has its withdrawals but anyone who would forgo it
has never tried it
nathanael.ink 