Sunken Friendships & Other Poems

By Jennifer Klein

(Instagram: @jenniferkleinreal)

Sunken Friendships

People always talk about perished romance

Decaying petals on a pedestal, flower stem still in their hands

Not many spill their mouth ink on sunken friendships

But every once in a while, I dip my quill back in

Fled on a lifeboat before I knew to panic

You always wanted to change the world

Well, you crumbled mine temporarily

Crushed it into sand and tossed it out from under my feet

Sealed our time capsule shut and buried our treasure

Somewhere far beyond the sea and metric measure

Ironic because pirates will never want it

Innocence that sought without greed

A whale song wailing that it’s been beached

It should have been a longer story

But there will never be a higher word count

Tried so hard to search my memories

But my periscope is no crystal ball

And could not locate a future burial ground

Or a hastily scribbled map crammed into a bottle

Lonely on the seafloor befriending all the rubble

The ship remains only converse with fish piss bubbles

Warn them to enjoy their bright existence before

Becoming One with the great omniscient Puzzle

I knew you had your troubles

But had no idea when you walked in

That someday you’d abandon me because of them

And leave me stranded without so much as a stem.

Spinner of Golden Threads

You were spinning threads of gold

In a fucked up world

Somehow they saw its shimmer

While others were thrown aside

Their threads deemed tainted

By the same shreds of consciousness

That yours helped sew

Why can they see the celestial in you?

And not in the masses who perished

Alone in the cold abyss

Heartstrings left unused.

Limestone Spirits

They say limestone captures spirit memories

Plays them over and over projecting ghosts into infinity

I lose my eyes up in the sky praying this is true

I don’t want my Hoosier dreams to ever be through

Long ago the limestone set its sights on me

Throughout centuries of joy and defeat

Hope it looks upon every moment I had and spins it into the bittersweet

Only want my sunbeams and reflections to be on repeat

Wonder why it cared so much

To pay attention to wherever upon it my soul touched

To deem me worthy of being a recorded ghost

Must have known it was one of the places my heart felt most

The students who encounter an excerpt of my being

Will be frightened at first, but then feel seen

Irresistible friendships and lost and found zest

Cramming on a dark night of the soul for a test

Someday when my soul leaves the Earth

I’ll float down to Indiana and sit in front of the hearth

Of the sacred fireplace where I learned more of my worth

And critique what moments of mine the limestone spirits decided to set forth.

Sealegs

My briny sealegs

Twist, turn, float

Contort with my body

In chlorinated waves

A manmade boat

I’ve spent too long crying

This water is the opposite

Of my Kentucky tears

In the middle of a YMCA

A manmade sea for sealess seafarers

What kind of sealegs did they have?

My grandparents, my friends 

Are they in some distant world now

Flying underwater with no breath

Laughing at our misconception of death?

Bookends

The newborn in the cradle

The first ornate bookend

Made of the finest marble

A bit of trouble, but

They can only babble

Presumed innocence

For some, no one

Will ever be as cherished again

Than before they can even

Remember when their story began

Except perhaps

Right before the last

Intricate bookend, staring at them

Eyes downcast

Weeping purity onto

Their weariness

Reborn love from

Memory-wombs

Trying to nurse them

Away from their tombs

But the novels started rotting long ago

Most love polishing marble

Aging books- less so

Pages torn out of spite

Others worn out from the light

Text too small to decipher

Or too nonsensical to even bother

Self-polishing ones thrown out in the cold

Shivering from their stories never told

Bookends with nothing left to hold.

About the Author:

Jennifer Klein is a writer, musician, and artist.

Poetry is one of her favorite ways to make social commentary and merge her inner and outer worlds.

Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Hawai`i Pacific Review, Fahmidan Journal, Bombfire, and others.

She received a bachelor’s degree in English with minors in Dutch Studies and Norwegian from Indiana University Bloomington.

You can follow her on Instagram @JenniferKleinReal