Unforeseen Endings by Michael Keshigian

An old man lived here

before our purchase,

raised in this home,

he became a widower years later,

forced into reclusiveness

as a result of a menial pension,

lack of societal skills and death of his spouse.

It didn’t end well for him,

the neighbors say, always alone,

downsizing to three rooms

from eight that existed, enough to cook,

sleep, and exercise his passion for writing

in a six by ten area with a desk, chair,

and computer as necessary tools

to engage his fantasies

between appointed meals

at indiscriminate times,

piling dishes till the end of the week.

Stuffed in desk drawers

we found printed pages of returned manuscripts,

identified with his name and address

atop five to fifty lines of various poems,

tri-folded, but extended flat,

no longer restricted to an envelope,

the second drawer, a file,

compiling a record of those efforts

no longer imprisoned in the first level.

A lonely story related by isolated artifacts,

a story neither one of us considered

would become our own.

A home withered, released by time,

as if severed by an axe

from the expectation assumed

at all beginnings.

Michael Keshigian’s thirteenth poetry collection, The Garden Of Summer was released April, 2019 by Flutter Press. He has been widely published in numerous national and international journals, recently including Red River Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Oyez Review, Bluepepper, Muddy River Review, Smoky Quartz and has appeared as feature writer in over twenty publications with 6 Pushcart Prize and 2 Best Of The Net nominations. (michaelkeshigian.com)