When the Boy From All The Old Poems
sends you a letter saying,

I’ve been clean for 6 months now,
and I want to apologize for everything
my hands did back then.

Strangely,
it will not feel like healing.
Even if it is true. Even if
this is the kindest thing that boy
has done for you in years.

For who among us knows
how to swallow such a truth?

To know for certain
how many things we hoped were honesty
were, in fact, just whiskey.

That every song
we danced to that night was sung
by the Hallelujah Junkie Choir.

This boy
who always woke up smiling,
showed up at your door
with 3 tomatoes and a mango,
reached those dirty hands
into such dark things.

How humiliating.

And what does it say
about you?

Everything you still call love
he now calls Rock Bottom.

When the Boy From All The Old Poems
sends you a letter saying

I’m so proud of you,
and all the ways you have not died
in the years that grew between us.

You will write back

I’m so proud of you too!
Look how clean we have become

in the hands of other people.

How lucky we are
to have realized love

Need look nothing like a shot glass

or a shotgun.