I’m juggling people I’ve known
like someone who’s just learned to juggle.
Two balls is the most I can do:

people I wish I’d known better,
and those I wish I’d never known
at all, or rather, that they’d never known me,

never felt that apparent (but still perplexing)
mix of attraction and resentment
that brought them closer than I wanted
or even they wanted to be,

what after a while made me drop them
quite deliberately
in the hopes they’d roll out of mind.

The sphere of those I wish I’d known
more deeply has a vaguer outline.
There are faces on that hazy planet,
but it spins too fast for me to make them out.

The other ball, on the other hand, is clear,
so motionless I can’t believe it’s airborne,

which it isn’t, really,
more a tumor in my stomach
that I’ve taken out and imagined

tossing in the air, like an upward version
of projectile vomiting,
though I prefer to call it prayer.

 

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Garret Keizer is the author of the essay collection Starting from Paterson (EastOver). His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Hudson Review, Raritan, and The New Yorker, among others.

 
Image: Evie S. Unsplash, 2021.