For you, the catch wasn't something caught: not word or contender, attention or fire. Not the almost-missed train, or the sort of wave surfers might wait an entire lifetime for. Not the promise that leaves the old man adrift for days, his boat creaking, miles offshore. Nor what cleaves the heart in two, that left your throat parched and mute for taking pill after yellow-green pill, the black-blue taste the price you paid to kill the two-parts sadness to one-part anger. No. The catch was what you could never let go. It's what you carried, and still do. poem by Ben Wilkinson from For Real (Smith|Doorstop Books, 2014)
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