Virginia Kane

Loneliness

I wrote no poems that summer. You moved out
with your boyfriend but forgot a few things.

Your pink waffle maker, a pencil case of fabric
markers, bean sprouts rotting in a jar on the windowsill.

We weren’t speaking. I wanted my freedom
and for no one to ever leave.

I was most in love with
the unattainable.

My lover’s other lovers. Photographs
by an artist who declined all interviews.

All the furniture in our living room
had once been my parents

and always, I hated to think
there would be a time after

this city, this evening, this meal.
I only felt at home on overlooks

or the first night I spent with
someone new. Did it matter

when I gained a witness
if I had lost so many?

At night, the subletter painted
landscapes at your old desk.

In spring, you’d overpruned the hydrangeas.
Through August, I waited but they never bloomed.

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Virginia Kane is a poet and essayist. Her work has appeared in them., The Adroit Journal, Poet Lore, The Baltimore Review, swamp pink, MAYDAY and on the Ours Poetica web series. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she works at one store that sells new books and one store that sells used books.