Poetry
our end
you are old and very sick
now so you ask if I remember
this and that and I do
but it doesn’t help because
I also remember what
you say you never said and
what you say you never did
so let’s not talk about
remembering or not remembering
in fact let’s not remember
let’s just talk again about
how it looks like rain and
how awful the nurses are
but how that one doctor at least
seems to know something
and let’s pretend it isn’t
that there is nothing you or I
can do or undo about any
of it ever again
let’s pretend
we haven’t reached our end
Nathaniel Lachenmeyer
Nathaniel Lachenmeyer is a disabled author of books for children and adults. His first book, The Outsider, which takes as its subject his late father's struggles with schizophrenia and homelessness, was published by Broadway Books. Nathaniel has forthcoming/recently published poems with The American Poetry Review, Poetry International, North Dakota Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, Red Rock Review and DIAGRAM. Nathaniel lives outside Atlanta with his family.