What Is Keeping You Going?

The Poem Is Not Read

An Unusual Love Story

The poem was not read. She said she liked the poem, but it wasn’t read. It is not a secret that in life, we take risks, and the unfortunate consequence of this is separation and pain.

the only thing that can save you now

Sometimes we don’t notice the pain. We wake up and try to hide it all day. We close ourselves off.

She said, “It’s okay if you don’t read it.” For a while, I didn’t read the poem at all. It was fine because she said so, but I was waiting for her to say something else that would give me permission to read it. She said something else: “I’m in love with my poetry teacher. I think about him all the time.”

So I read the poem, and it was as if I’d read it all my life because she loved her poetry teacher. I thought about them too, together. Together for days, not even weeks. For days, in mind-numbing detail. Together for bookshelves and wineglasses and street corners full of students walking around in pairs, looking at the sky because they’d forgotten what the sky looked like, full of love together, so close together that it was a wonder there wasn’t more yet.

I read the poem over and over again, and I imagined them as she did, without shame at all. Just “they” and “this,” not “me.” I thought about her poetry teacher in a way I’m sure he never pictured himself.