When we hear the news your neighbor shot herself,
I'm slow to link her name to the smiling face
We see every Christmas at your parents' place
And each morning on our fridge, dressed as an elf.
Strange that two girls who grew up a block apart
Share little but a birthplace anymore—
Just a spare key that you kept to her front door
And an old phone number you still know by heart.
These days you've got me: to love you, not to die,
To try to keep in warm, vague, tender doubt
Some certainties that we don't talk about,
To wash the plates and stow them when they're dry,
Or just to shake the water from a knife
And take you in my dripping arms for now,
Shushing the questions gathered at your brow
About the kind of person who ends her life.
For you I keep that silence. For your friend
I offer to the silence where she went
The hope that what she did is what she meant
And what she knew of pain is at an end.
Source: Midlife (Measure, 2024)
Sleeping Dogs by Matthew Buckley Smith | Poetry Reed Diffuser
Matthew Buckley Smith is the author of Midlife (Measure, 2024), Dirge for an Imaginary World (Able Muse, 2012), and the chapbook The Soft Black Stars (Rattle, 2026). He hosts the poetry podcast SLEERICKETS.
