Abigail Kirby Conklin
Yes, and
I’m writing this same
stupid poem again
about how
there’s an alternate universe
in which you love me
the way I want you
to love me and you
are the version of you
I curated in my head
thirty-four seconds after meeting you
and decided that we
would be sharing
a plot in a cemetery
someday, as if we were
some ancient-ass
couple exchanged
by our families
for a goat and an acre
of arable land
500 years ago,
and not the two miserable
half-cocked children
that we are, spinning
through therapy’s revolving
door and waking up
from thirty years’
worth of nightmares, soaked
in the sour sweat
of knowing this time,
no, it won’t
be different.
Abigail Kirby Conklin is an educator and writer currently based in Toronto, Ontario. She is the author of the 2020 chapbook Triage, the Substack "Recently," and a variety of other works found in Tule Review, Sugar House Review, Elevation Review, and Wild Roof Journal. She's online at abigailkirbyconklin.us and @akc_poetry_prints.