He compares Amazon to “a leech feeding on the marrow of our collective dreamscape.”
Noah leans closer. “How many leech tattoos do you think he has?”
“Three. Minimum.”
“Do they have names?”
“Oh, for sure. Envy. Greed. And Jeff Bezos.”
He snorts. “You’ve still got it, you know.”
I pretend not to notice the way his voice softens on the wordyou.
We spend the next few readers snickering into our sleeves like we’re back in college, whispering behind the backs of more earnest souls. It’s easy. Fun. Like muscle memory. Like we never stopped being whoever we used to be around each other, before we grew up and life changed and we remade ourselves.
Then the next poet steps up, and everything shifts.
She’s older, maybe in her sixties, with soft gray curls tucked behind her ears and a worn flannel button-up over a flowing skirt. She grips the mic stand like it’s steadying her. Her voice is sandpaper smoothed by time.
There’s no puff or pomp to her introduction. “For anyone who has ever outlived someone they loved.”
Beside me, Noah stills. His arm brushes mine.
Her words are gentle but devastating. Grief as the echo left in your bones. Grief as the shape of someone who used to breathe beside you. Grief as a house you still live in, even after all the furniture is gone.
She talks about the way people stop saying their name. The way silence grows teeth. The way the world keeps turning like nothing broke.
By the third stanza, I’m crying.
Not a dramatic, cinematic cry. Just quiet, steady tears. My cheeks are wet. My breath comes uneven. My throat closes around something sharp and familiar. His name. Countless memories—the ones I’ve forgotten, the ones I’ll never let go. A weight I’ve carried for so long, I stopped noticing how much it was crushing me.
I don’t make a sound, but I feel Noah’s hand move behind me, slow and tentative, resting gently on the back of my chair, then sliding to my shoulder.
Warm. Steady. Not pushing.
Just there.
I don’t lean in.
But I don’t pull away either.
When the poem ends, the room exhales like a single lung.
I do too.
Noah doesn’t say anything at first. He watches me, his eyes soft and unreadable. He’s letting it breathe, instead of trying to fix anything. Like he knows better than to offer words when none will do.
After a beat, he murmurs, “She reminded me of Owen’s mom.”
I glance at him, surprised.
“She used to write poetry.” His eyes are fixed on the now-empty stage. “Mostly in her garden journal. After he died, I went to check on her. She handed me a bunch of notes tucked between seed packets. Little lines. Tiny griefs. Stuff about how he used to hum when he washed the dishes. How she’d give him a drink of water when he skinned his knee on his bike to distract him from how much it hurt. How no mother should have to outlive her child. It wrecked me.”
I swallow. “I didn’t know that.”
He shrugs, the movement small. “You were carrying your own wreckage.”
I stare at my hands, folded in my lap. “I think I still am.”
