Do you ever think of me? By Sharon Waller Knutson

You with all your pedigrees:

MFA, PHD, professor, novelist,

husband and father of five.

Me: the girl in glasses gooey

eyed over your prose

published in the New Yorker

while MS magazine rejects

pathetic pieces I scribble

on toilet paper in the bathroom

of the bars in Mexico

where we sit on stools

bloody red as the bulls

and your face after downing

tequila straight from the bottle,

pickling the worm and you.

Me: the crying fool

who leaves you standing

on the train tracks weaving

and waving before you stumble

back to the suburbs. I picture

you on skid row or in a cemetery,

not on Google. Your dark curly

hair is gone, but I see you and me

in your novels and know the answer.

Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published more than  thousand poems in  numerous journals and ten poetry books, the most recent, The Vultures are Circling, forthcoming in January by Cyberwit.