No. 8

Winter 2005

Dear Lee: Odd how the very thing that brought
us together fades into the substance of our regret.
We do not mourn what was. Lord knows how
good it was to be free of that fire. What we miss
is what might have been -- plain and ordinary nights
of checkers, the sacredness of watching ourselves
grow old, trimming roses and apple trees together.

I’d settle for a single visit with our mutual friend
in which he didn’t relive unhappy history or blame
the world for his own uneasy fit into its confines.
There’s so much negative energy there, it actually
sustains him. He is lost in the quest for stuff
and things, convinced they will fill up the holes
your absence has left in his life. He has gone back

to the fifties to permeate his hours with friends.
Girls in high school whom he wouldn’t have given
a second glance now come regularly to lunch
and do not know how he lusts for their husbands.
Displaying his stuff is what he has become -- a gaudy
Christmas display window hoping the oohs and ahs
of the crowd will fill a void he has yet to name.

Copyright 2005, Frederick Zydek

nidus is an online publication supported by the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.