Like The Plague. by Linda M. Crate

I remember

seeing my dying professor

at the bar

my one ex dragged me to,

of how I cried

because he told us how

he was dying;

it broke my heart to hear

his voice cracking

to know there was so much

he still wanted to do and see despite his age

I just wanted to take his illnesses from him

give them to someone who truly

deserved to suffer like a politician or a murderer—

not a sweet old man

who never did me any harm,

but I know life isn't always fair;

maybe the drinking eased his pain

I didn't drink anything neither did my ex

who was only there for the music

I didn't really care for in that crammed local bar in

my college years that I would later avoid

like the plague.

Linda M. Crate's poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has five published chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017), and splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018), and one micro-chapbook Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project, May 2018). She is also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018).