Billy Collins Stole My Memories
You can have them. I won’t press charges.
I won’t miss most of them—the church pews
polished with Pine-Sol, the blandness
of the Eucharist, the briny taste of guilt;
the dope then Suboxone then withdrawals;
the suicide attempt followed by a week
in the psych ward staring out the window
as the cops approached a trap house, guns
drawn; the warm flesh of my infidelities.
This morning I made breakfast without memories
or eggs or butter or a block of sharp cheddar.
My kids didn’t notice that I was barefoot
and Billy Collins was wearing my moccasins.
But this strictly a no-return policy interaction.
Everything is yours now, Billy. Don’t fuck it up.
About the Author: Nathan Graziano lives in Manchester, New Hampshire, with his wife and kids. His books include Teaching Metaphors (Sunnyoutside Press), After the Honeymoon (Sunnyoutside Press) Hangover Breakfasts (Bottle of Smoke Press in 2012), Sort Some Sort of Ugly (Marginalia Publishing in 2013), and My Next Bad Decision (Artistically Declined Press, 2014), Almost Christmas, a collection of short prose pieces, was recently published by Redneck Press. Graziano writes a baseball column for Dirty Water Media in Boston. For more information, visit his website: www.nathangraziano.com.
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Image Credit: Bainbridge Colby, silhouette from The Library of Congress. Public Domain.
As It Ought To Be 