By: Richard LeDue

“Separate Vacations”

Back to the blank page
like it’s some sort of lover
who forgives my silences
too easily.

These words kisses
on the back of a neck,
undressing
the softest apology.

That’s probably why
I always return
because I don’t ask either
about the other writers,

who eagerly filled in
while we were apart,
or why there’s reassurance
in saying nothing.

“About Hell”

An echo is just a rehearsal
for the ghost we both want
and hope to never be.

Stanley Kubrick once said
to Stephen King
how ghosts stories were
optimistic, so King asked
about hell,
which Kubrick replied
by saying he didn’t believe
in hell.

I believe both of them were right:
continued existence could cut
forever like a knife
that never dulls,
especially when you live more
in the words of strangers
trying to scare their friends
than in anything you did in life,
but oblivion could also hurt
with how no one remembers
you years later,
while the moss on your tombstone
smothers your name.

“The conversation at a restaurant”

has to believe it’s unique
from the silence of an empty room,
but a thousand years from now
those voices will be no different
than all the things left unsaid,
while the dessert menu
is just another religion
waiting to die.

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Richard LeDue (he/him) lives in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada. He writes poems. His last collection, “Another Another,” was released from Alien Buddha Press in May 2025.