Poetry

Lord I Thought at Least You’d Be Here

Elizabeth Metzger

When the others knew you I knew of you.

Maybe you need to be reminded

how we met

whether it was romantic?

                                        Make it better

I hear you singing

with my ear

            make it better

            make it better

When I lay next to you in life

only you had the life.

Already you survive me.

Death after all that forethought is so green

in the dark like a wet kiss

but Lord

I would give you up still for a person.

Elizabeth Metzger is the author of Lying In and The Spirit Papers, winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry. She is a poetry editor at The Los Angeles Review of Books.
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Poetry Summer 2023 Elizabeth Metzger
Originally published:
June 12, 2023

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