I have a few.
Once thought I had many more.
So lucky, as Streisand once sang,
that I needed other people.

It was an illusion.
For other people don’t need me, it seems.
Those who’ve disappeared or slipped away slowly
may now number in the hundreds. 

Andrea, Ariadne, Tom, Dan, Sondra, William, Marissa … 

But why did we do those things –
the phone calls, the letters, the lunches,
the matchmaking, the offering of the shoulder,
the borrowing, the returning, the sharing
of most painful truths and epiphanies,
the tears, the hugs, the catharses.
       
“All that’s been swept out with the garbage,”
muttered Schigolch in Lulu’s London garret.
“Babs” didn’t know squat!

And if you ask, these people have their excuses, sure.
The bland and evasive: We moved away, my job changed,
I got married and had a kid.
But, if you can get a few drinks into them:
He was too forward, too backward, too needy,
he’s stuck and refuses to move on,
I wrote a book and I don’t have time anymore.
Etcetera …

We did those things – all of us! We needed support.
Platonic love’s a most welcome narcotic.
Interests dovetailed for a while; quid pro quo.

Don’t kid yourself.
They’d have kicked you off the Titanic’s lifeboat
if it came to that.