"Did You Ever Feel Forgotten?"
question asked by Sarena Fox
by Ace Boggess
Five years scab over
as if a single wound, a day.
Their lives—those others
who knew the me of me,
as those who know the you of you—
continue as if climbing stairs,
while I, you, we
wait with broken ankles
at the base, watch friends
march away, appearing smaller,
although it is we
who have grown small.
In another version of our lives,
we work steady jobs,
begin the process
of erasing the unburied dead.
The crowd scatters from an infant’s cry
the same as from a gunshot.
We center an exodus.
We have left those who leave us,
embracing disappearances
as a wineglass feels both empty &
lighter than air.
Ace Boggess is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.