Failed story / Elegy 15

 

A failed story is a poem

Buddhist stories end

With what we

Had thought would

Happen not happening

Teacher angered by

Dirty dishes left

In communal sink

Realizes she left

Them there / wisdom

Of embarrassment /

Your story ends

But why it ends

Where it ends

Or began where

It began can’t

Be told / narrator’s

Unreliable and you’re

Dead / need to know

Basis when there’s

Nothing to know

Is all tease

She in jail on five

Counts, including theft

Of your car

Which she drove

To a friend’s

House afterward

A count is number

But not plot

At least not

In the sense

Of story making

Sense of arc

Flat-lined unreadable

To whom story

Is told cannot

Tell it back

Do not ask

It tells for thee