POEM - E McKinney St

Observe the words of someone who regrets

having spent so much energy

on being critical of what I love, people included;

primarily people, in fact

I wrongly assumed it was proving their importance

to me, all that fault finding;

the opposite is what I most commonly achieved

Such lonely waste, this baggage-burdened heart

I’ve learned to expect nothing

in the way of sympathy,

and maybe that’s fair

Occasionally-happy dreams, it seems,

are the best I should hope for

It’s all sloppy sorrow in the end,

so we’d best cling to anything

which isn’t that in the meantime

I do so wish you knew how often

I’ve both thought and think

grateful thoughts of you

But to only encounter them on the page?

Let us agree that anyone who could see

to loving someone like me

deserves much, much more

than this anonymized glimmer of immortality