TURNS OUT, I’M STILL ASLEEP
Mostly my fault, the fault I’m built around.
We were a pair again until we weren’t one.
You made me laugh. We made that sound
in bed when we flew too close to the sun.
You made my story make some sense again,
assembled fragments of my memory;
you joined the edges of what happened, when.
Our last attempt is lost. The melody
of “I Will” by the Beatles won’t let up,
though now we know you Won’t. I failed.
I turned the Holy Grail into a paper cup,
our wine to water, and the garbage pail
of time is home to what we wanted, now.
You tried to wake me up. I don’t know how.
—from Rattle #65, Fall 2019
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Jamey Hecht: “After decades as a lit professor, I became a therapist. I use poetry in my practice all the time. The two disciplines are really one. There would be no Freud without Sophocles and Shakespeare. ‘Ripeness is all …’” (web)
