Ryan Jessup

Rejection

sometimes I long for the failed poems

the ones that struggled so hard like small turtles that I tried to help make it to shore hoping they could spring forward out of the sand and would flourish into the open sea

but as I age I understand more about the art of losing as Elizabeth Bishop writes while accepting the possibility that even death can be a gift

midnight
one candle goes out
then another

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About the Author

Ryan Jessup is a husband, father, and poet. He lives with his family in the foothills of North Carolina.

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