It’s a Perfect Day for Jellybeans
By John C. Mannone
I like to try something different.
I am afraid of dying
an old man without
someone to love me.
I prayed for years. No answer
until I decided to give up,
resolved to that fate.
I absorbed myself into work, into poems
so much so I was oblivious to her
noticing me for at least two years
before I noticed her. We shared
jellybeans and poetry. We are poetry
sometimes more intimate
than flesh. A mere soft touch
of words, a caress
the heart feels throughout the night.
So now, I do not understand
the loss, why such great a loss.
I am not immune, but vulnerable.
Why is surviving tragedy so difficult?
How much loss is enough to become whole?
I ask you, the one who knows
better than anyone.
You smile like the wind, like starlight
but you do not answer me. Tell me
before I drown
in the questions.
I like to try something different.
Can I rely on you to save me? Perhaps
the answer is in the silence.
O sweet love!
Perhaps a bag of jellybeans is enough.
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John C. Mannone has poems accepted in North Dakota Quarterly, the 2020 Antarctic Poetry Exhibition, Foreign Literary Review, The Menteur, Blue Fifth Review, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, and others. His won the Impressions of Appalachia Creative Arts Contest in poetry (2020) and the Carol Oen Memorial Fiction Prize (2020). He was awarded a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature and served as celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). His latest collection, Flux Lines: The Intersection of Science, Love, and Poetry, is forthcoming from Linnet’s Wings Press (2020). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other journals. A retired physics professor, he lives near Knoxville, Tennessee. http://jcmannone.wordpress.com
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