Poetry on Lost Street is an open mic event held on the third Sunday of each month at the Lost Street Brewing Company in Durant, Oklahoma. The featured poet for this session was David Thornburgh.

I wrote this about someone who once said I was “the one that got away,” but really I was the one she threw away.

All My Stupid Tears

by Richard R. Barron

Remember that night with your white lacy dress and a bottle of blush wine?

By the end of that evening your dark eyes and darker heart and darkest soul had me crying in my blush.

These days, you are haunting me. You haunt me as I sit on the front porch in the cold, trying to forget all the times you felt like the answer, holding you so close under the amber streetlights all those years ago.

Your eyes seemed to see right through me, even when they didn’t.

Then.

More stupid tears, tears that made little splashes in your hair as we held each other, saying goodbye.

Then.

Years went by. Decades.

One morning, I wake to see a voicemail from you from 4 a.m. I listen, but all I can hear is you calling my name, and that horrific gasp as you inhale in the middle of sobbing.

My tears were so stupid.

But your tears were so honest.