the hurt in the heart the heart won’t hold

as if he’d done enough, not enough but something, something this side of nothing, when nothing wears a tourniquet and a stocking cap in the rain, the kind of rain adaptive reuse guys with lit candles for eyes turn into little houses with little willows and little windsocks that don’t sock so much as sing songs about nothing, nothing when it’s this side of something, nothing when they hoped it’d seem like light but feels more like hurt, the hurt in the heart the heart won’t hold, as if enough were something lit and as if were something real and he weren’t something like nothing, nothing but a lit candle in the bleed of the rain, the kind of rain stocking-capped planters hope is something but is nothing, nothing because it sings songs about nothing, nothing because nothing isn’t this side of something but this side of enough

Pat Foran's heart may or may not have the capacity to hold hurt. His work has appeared in various journals. Find him at neutralspaces.co/patforan/ and on Twitter at @pdforan and on Bluesky at @pdforan.bsky.social.