grandma always said
I’d grow up to be a heartbreaker
and I’m glad her dementia
kept her from feeling hers break
when I sat by her bedside
hungover from the night before
with no prospects in life,
misunderstood by everyone who
could still remember my name
grandma always said
I’d grow up to be a heartbreaker
little did she know that my broken heart
came close to killing a few people
but thankfully the police arrived
in time to drag me away
worrying every last person
who cared to still know me
to remember the altruistic child
who held out his tiny hand to help
people even if he didn’t like them
grandma always said
I’d grow up to be a heartbreaker
six years clean of street drugs
and on the street stroking
the hearts and minds of the cats
my mother taught me to embrace
as the only taste of any god I’ll know
they hiss to me that broken hearts
are for assholes like me,
and it’s this kind of thing
that always makes me fall in love
with a spirit I always felt,
had come to have forgotten,
but it came back to renew me,
even if I didn’t deserve it—grandma
always spoiled me somehow.
Kevin Ridgeway is the author of Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019) and Invasion of the Shadow People (Luchador Press, 2022), in addition to over a dozen chapbooks and split books. His work has appeared in Hiram Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Gargoyle, Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Heavy Feather Review, San Pedro River Review and Trailer Park Quarterly, among others. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, he lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.