Hey
photo by Sarah Brockhaus
by John A. Nieves
Because it started in pepper spilled on a diner
table, this sad little opus was born grains
and grey. And I think of the pebbles that dull
the mower as they sleep in the grasses pushing
up toward your sun. And your front lawn is
sloping and your driveway is filling with family
cars and the stains of routine. Because the coffee
we drank once, the beers we raised once, have found
their way through us and to us are shades.
Because the noise of forgetting for you is barking
and yelling and heavy footfalls on stairs that have
never been still. But here in my quiet, memory slips
slower and the lilt of your laughter is easy
to pull. There are numbers in spreadsheets and over-
full voicemails but the fog hiding the sidewalk is
not concerned. So I write to the you who I think
could still hear this, twenty-five years back
and eating some toast, to say that you knew how
the hum of old neon could tumble pastoral on worn
parking stops. And maybe they’ve crumbled and maybe
they’ve held up but they said you are here to us when
the city said goodnight. Before stock phrases entered
mass circulation, before life became a branded affair,
we’d mock the nothing creeping up in the morning
and swear to each other we’d get out of there. From this
distance yesterday can still see tomorrow, but from there
today plays on repeat. So I write from this lost night
in a long closed-up diner to say I remember when leaving
piled up to the ceiling and I climbed and you napped
and we ended this far apart, but the sound of you
laughing still lives like a painting of some vacation
we never took. If you ever need it, just write me
a message. I’ll send it with napkins and a cracked
yellow mug with the tinier wish that this is enough.
John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: Hopkins Review, Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, 32 Poems and Southern Review. A 2024 Pushcart Prize winner, he also won the Indiana Review Poetry Contest and his first book, Curio, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize. He is associate professor of English at Salisbury University and an editor of The Shore Poetry.