You understood
nothing
except the piece
of yourself
you tore out of us
and tossed at the fault line
beating like a heart.
I built this poem
around the jagged wound,
refired in the kiln of a sun
who heard my
silent bleeding
and wept aloud
for the breaking you had done.
© 2025 Jennifer Wagner
dVerse Poetics: Building from the Broken
Nestled inside
the fifth largest city in the USA,
between little bookshops and mom-and-pops,
where people came to recover from
TB and asthma all those years ago,
they knew something then.
Some say
the signs are everywhere.
Well, there was at least this one. Planted like a
flag under a slope of sunny sky.
I circled back. Another look
with a tear in my eye. Your healing blurry
but nearer.
Why worry? It said. Dead end.
Somehow it seems contradictory,
as if we should, anyway.
As if worrying is doing something.
But, like the sign says, it is. Taking the
worry road
just brings us one step closer to dead.
© 2025 Jennifer Wagner
What’s Going On? Contradictions
Photo: street sign in the Sunnyslope area of Phoenix, AZ © 2025 Jennifer Wagner