Cruel Disregard
https://poems.culturing.net/2026/09/15/cruel-disregard/
What do you have to teach me,
ghost of a hope long past,
still reminding me where I have come from
and where I must go? I have learned
all your lessons too thoroughly, and now
I must bow, I can only pretend to be whole
without you. But I am without you still,
cross-purposed and lost in a tangle of growths
that won't reach maturity without an impossible effort.
But there is still one way to you, through
the bitter heart, the transgressions of sense
and the cruel disregard for the world we call real.
We both know how that feels. We both know
what that pain reveals.
