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compassion is the new black.

i’m trying to get back. so i
try again. and

here we were:
food fried so nice and good,
sitting down, us both in the round –
this is nice! we haven’t been together in
what seems like forever
because we’re never in town!
catching up above-ground with Top-40 in the background –
about how far forward you can see,
and on and on about how great it would be,
and this was your second time starting a family
and me, me, me,
me?

please?

i was infected by your disease –
like a thrash metal rocker from the nineties,
i didn’t think i could live without your “bless you” to my sneeze.
that’s fucking corny, i know, but as much as i had
a skewered view of relationships,
i loved you for almost ten years in the throes of what one
could have called a friendship

and now you’re fast-walking fitfully
through empty city streets,
trying to make it to a ten o’clock movie you blame me we’re running to see.
the cinema’s downtown and there’s no busses to take
so you walk ahead, no, it’s fine,
i know where it is.
i should have turned around and forgotten about it
but been there, done that before.

i can see you ahead of me, of that i’m sure –

please!

stop!
no, wait for me!
what did i ever do to make you act so cruelly?

about him,
about that night, the movie –
moved on.

but he was too far ahead and wouldn’t be able to hear me.

it seemed you were willing to leave me anyway:
send me back to the kitchen for a better entrée.
i know i’m the Chef’s Special,
but there had to have been a better way than
a total one-eighty during a cold night in May
in my year of infamy that was 2017.
i’m still thinking about it, apparently.

there’s no need to go into specifics,
nor to be explicit.
i get it now: it wasn’t kismet –
human connection isn’t always intrinsic.
i just thought

maybe,

//jf 11.5.2022

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