The Dinner Party

It’s a dinner party

where nothing ever happens.

No one risks the sentence

that would split the table open.

Life stays unresolved,

politely.

So we cling to the chairs,

time the ovens,

wonder if there’s another bottle

hiding in the closet.

I attend these dinners,

again and again,

and each time

I feel myself

more alone.

Writing this

I touch each writer before me,

realizing

they, too,

had nothing to offer

but the truth.

And no one

who understood it.

I am a ruptured esophagus

trading wine for blood.