Let Me Explain

How there have been whole days 

spent feeling on the verge of tears 

that never surface—a twinge held 

in the chest. Pressure behind the eyes. 

How it might start with a brilliant 

September sky because such a sky 

once cracked open and the world 

would never be right. How it never was. 

How shame is a sunburned face, 

humiliation a fever—dread trying 

to leave the body through a door 

on fire. Any door. How the only way 

not to say goodbye is goodbye. 

Say I love you. Say see you soon. 

Never I’ll miss you. Never don’t go. 

How calendars stack up faster than 

hard drives, faster than winters of 

blankets and a forest of silent 

Christmas trees. How I have searched 

for the ghosts of people still alive. 

Not their ghosts, but our distant history 

and never future and oh 

please not goodbye. Not that.

It is not a wasted life, this 

searching for the words.

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Jonathan Everitt

Jonathan Everitt’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Laurel Review, Passengers, Stone Canoe, BlazeVox, Scarlet Leaf Review, Small Orange, Impossible Archetype, Ghost City Press, The Empty Closet, Lake Affect, and the Moving Images poetry anthology, among others. His poem, “Calling Hours,” was the basis for the 2015 short film, Say When. Jonathan has also led a workshop for LGBTQ poets and co-founded the long-running monthly open mic, New Ground Poetry Night, in Rochester, N.Y., where he lives with his partner, David Sullivan. Jonathan earned his MFA in creative writing from Bennington College.