You Look Just Like Your Father (by Josh Romig)

Josh Romig

You Look Just Like Your Father

The doctors told me I should abort.
But my mom convinced me that this was for the best

I wanted a closed adoption.
They said that I’d never see you again.
I was okay with that.
It made things easier.

You have to know,
I never wanted any of this,
I never thought I’d be one to abandon my only child
That’s monstrous.
Please believe me,
I am not a monster.

But he was.

Your eyes are the same.
Dark and hard…
but sort of empty too.

Your smile
is soft and gentle – like his.
A practiced liar’s smile.

Your hands,
they look just like the ones he wrapped around my mouth and neck,
long and thin, but surprisingly strong.

Your voice —
Identical to the one that whispered
“no one will believe you”
into my ear that night.

You even kind of smell like him.

I don’t know what you expected to get out of this:
Money?
An apology?
Closure?
Love?
I can’t give you any of those things.

I will tell you this:
I could have spared you this moment,
and not doing so, is my biggest regret.



* * * * *

JM (or Josh, whichever you prefer) Romig likes to write and perform poetry, and is also very bad at writing introductions for himself.

Find him somewhere in northeast Ohio or at https://www.facebook.com/thecatalystpoet. 

The Wishing Well Tattoo (by Josh Romig)

Josh Romig

The Wishing Well Tattoo

There’s this tattoo I want to get
if I ever get rid this fear
of making decisions.

It’s this little girl, maybe seven years old or so
she’s holding on to an aged dandelion by its neck.
Her eyes are closed and open to a whole other world —
she shoots a wish toward it
with every muscle in her body
that she doesn’t know the name of yet.

The seeds are propelled across my back
and transform into the shooting stars they always dreamed they’d be.
Somewhere below, on an otherwise empty beach
are a couple of teenagers
discovering themselves inside one another.
They kiss and tell no one.
The blanket promises to keep their secret
and the sand sneaks into places it knows it’s unwelcome.

They are drunk on the passion of the moment.
She’s lost in the stars
and wants to gently scoop those lights from the sky,
seal them in a mason jar,
and watch them do their cosmic dance around each other
to remind herself of how small she feels under them
and how amazing it felt to be everything and nothing
at the same time.
She holds her breath, closing her eyes
sending up a wish in the music of young lust.

Meanwhile,
on my rightmost shoulder blade
There’s an old man, looking down a wishing well
at the Young Lovers’ Play.

Smiling at his memories
which, like the ink, are fading.
A wish falls out of his mouth and speeds down into the darkness
it bounces off the back of the boy’s head,
and is gobbled up by the greedy sand.



* * * * *

JM (or Josh, whichever you prefer) Romig likes to write and perform poetry, and is also very bad at writing introductions for himself.

Find him at https://www.facebook.com/thecatalystpoet.  See him at Snoetry 4: A Kulchured Winter Wordfest.