You You You

by Benjamin Niespodziany

You You You

You taught a junkyard
to speak, winked
at the moon when it started
to move. You read the riot

act and collapsed halfway
through the introduction,
corrupted a dozen
trapeze artists to start

a diet of light tightrope. You wrote
home with your tears, misquoted
Shakespeare. You
dealt me diamonds in a game

I never understood. You called you
and cried over you and comforted
you in the you of the storm. You prayed
to make it safely home. You broke

your hands and mailed
me the X-rays, attaching
a homesick note that read,
“Aren’t these our wings?”

Benjamin Niespodziany is a librarian at the University of Chicago. He runs the multimedia art blog [neonpajamas] and has had work published in Cheap Pop, Paper Darts, Pithead Chapel, and more.

Artwork by: Unknown