Remember
Easy days
When you’d never
Have to leave?

Those evenings
In my basement
Where we’d talk
Until I laughed?

Out of fearing
What would come
When that silence
Grew abruptly

By the time
Each spoken grievance
Proved how sad
Such quiet was?

As the world
Which always begged
For attentions
Never wasted

On these proper
Ways of living
We’d neglected
Until now

Kept insisting
Someone leave
At request
Of having futures

Where their meaning
Offered nothing
But redundancy
Until death?

You said
That’d be some wish
Last night
Per our discussion

Telling lies
Not worth investing
Many years
Into their end,

Between
Two honest friends
Spilling truths
Not often mentioned

During moments
Tense from waiting
For each person
To object –

Knowing art
And other dreams
Have been buried
Since those evenings

Losing worth
Among the stillness
Fostered shyly
Through our speech.

Pretty soon
You had hung up
Once again
Bearing my question

Why the man
Who lost so little
Couldn’t feel
That I still cared?

– J. Pigno