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My former lovers send me many things:
old photos, art, mementoes of our lives;
if we had wed, they’d give me diamond rings,
but nothing of true value still survives.
My former lovers praise me to the skies;
say that we should’ve married, but instead,
we faced the truth, which was to realize
that our relationships were, frankly, dead.
The Monday morning quarterbacking hurts—
why grind this axe, why plow this tired row?
Why keep on sending stuff in fits and spurts?
Just get it over with: learn to let go!
Perhaps I symbolize their freer selves,
not yet assigned to life’s confining shelves.
Alison Jennings is a Seattle-based poet who taught in public schools before returning to poetry. She has had a mini-chapbook and over 100 poems published in numerous journals—including Cathexis Northwest Press, Mslexia, Poetic Sun, Red Door, and Society of Classical Poets—and been a semi-finalist in several contests. https://sites.google.com/view/airandfirepoet/home