This poem was written for The After Midnight Contest inspired by Zelda Fitzgerald, which aired August 2nd on Late Night Poets Radio Show. Enjoy!
It is the loose ends
with which men hang themselves.
Women, of course, sew
and stitch together scraps
of various colors
from crumpled dreams.
The diary entries
discovered
in the novel of a lover.
The leftover conversations that
men conjure into fame.
This is the ways of things.
The sparkling diamond must
be smothered.
And the men who buy their
brilliance with their grandmother’s
wedding rings,
they need to hear the crowd
cheer their name,
even when it means
the other half is undiscovered
behind lock and key.
The redacted words and phrases
of an entire gender’s generation
sitting, sewing
the burning growing
while their partners
picked at loose ends,
pursued the threads
that found them both
bitter, burnt and dead.
© 2022 | K.Hartless
Yard Sale of Thoughts 
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