Ohio, My Friends Are Dying

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I see their final days

in empty rooms

in that city

I left. See

their days as empty rooms

I left — empty

because I left.

Though, surely

their lives were filled

with things

I can’t see, filled,

as mine was elsewhere,

with time

that gathered to become

whatever their lives

meant to them.

Of course

more filled them

than heroin.

Days gathered

into a heavy lens

through which

I see my friends,

blurred, in those

abstract rooms

that suddenly emptied.