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Zachary’s Lament
And is it thus, that you cast me aside?
Once we were inseparable— always I was at hand. In the car, at grandma’s, on the road in a dozen different states,
and never were you once troubled at night,
for I was ever near.
(how could any monster, closeted or under bed, contend with such a fierce land carnivore?)
You hugged me, you tossed me high into the clear bright sunshine—
when you missed me, and I fell, did you ever hear a complaint or a cry?
A score of sleepovers, a hundred tea parties, always the perfect, constant companion—
never interrupting your most important conversations, always keeping your deepest, darkest secrets, (and never, ever sneaking the last piece of pie).
And now I lie, gathering dust, in a mean cardboard box, on the way to rummage— that indignity of indignities.
So much for love.
Oh well, perhaps next time.
—D. W. McMillen |