“when you are sad,” Elijah Patterson

when you are sad
every sad song
seems as if it were written
for you by a person
who doesn’t quite know your ache,
your particular hunger denied;
every poem a reading
of the valleys of your face
and the lines on your hands
by a lover who
pried themselves seven years ago
from the softest parts of your soul
with the wrong mix of words and silence

“For the Tenth Grade Me Reading ‘Howl’ Right Now,” Elijah Patterson

There’s nothing romantic about hospital food or gowns,
cotton worn thin by bleach and bodies before yours,
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with too much jam
that will– for years – remind you of flying chairs,
a pretty twenty-two-year-old standing with her foot in the door
while you shit, watching you read and sleep and rock and mostly stare
a hallway of locked doors your fingers itch to open.