Other People’s Dishes

My Wife and I had sex
on the commuter rail
months before
our first date.

Both Bill Murray
and my dog
have stories
where they wash other people’s dishes

—intimacy refines different things in different ways.

When I asked Ari to marry me
she was mid-shit
staring into an insurance bill.

Last night Emily woke to tell me she was scared
she doesn’t know what dying will feel like.

I told her it can hurt more
to see something you’ve believed in consumed by pride.

When they first found Fred’s cancer
they gave him four months to live.

He wanted to share his drugs with me
so he could leave me like he met me
but some change needs to be felt.

Death is a trapdoor red carpet.
Death is knowing what you can’t want
Death is in on the gag.
Death is answering for you.

When Emily struggled to get up this morning
I didn’t fight to wake her.

Catholic School is no place
for a six year old
in the throes of an existential crisis.

jeff taylor writes and performs poetry when he isn’t running cables along a wall or telling his kids not to paint on each other. jeff has a chapbook titled Heroes Make Better Sandwiches Than People published by his own broken pencils press. His work can also be read on Word Riot and the anthology Boston Poetry Slam: 20 years at The Cantab Lounge.