Comfortable Nurses on Roller Skates
Rich Ives

Everyone saw what we experienced and didn’t agree.
I’m fully arrived and spoken. There’s quite a few of me,
but I’m really only half of the me-features and I-dots, unconnected.
I didn’t expect to be disappointed when the bombing stopped.

Happiness would have found me impossible, but sometimes
when I visit myself I like to visit the untrained scholars working
in candlelight in the attic, and this pleases me as does
the way the ambulance ran over the pansies.

I told the party guest about my job. He was impressed.
He wanted to know what was wrong with my children.
I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t have any. He should have
made a greater effort to understand what I had failed to say.

Thank you lemon nostalgia toad that captured melancholy. Thank you
cartoon shirts that I have worn to comfort me. Thank you undecided air
that warmed me between because there is no delicate future in
the delicate future, which is part of its attraction.