Still Wondering if You Made It

We're proud to feature this poem from Jed Myers’ chapbook Our Use of the Stars, which was selected by Olatunde Osinaike as a finalist of The Headlight Review’s 2025 Poetry Chapbook Contest.

I’ve been able to miss you, without knowing     
if your silence began at the grille of a truck    
on a state route at dusk, or with a secret               
decision, or in sudden sickness I’d never learn        
the first thing about, but about the first thing
you told me—you were already in love 
with the bristlecone pines. Their twisted praise
clawing the sky, agonized and ecstatic
in their spare clusters and pairs, catatonic 
manics in wait for the rapture they look like
they’re in. You’d need to go stand among them
you said. And though it took tearing your roots
from the sea-level riverbanks where we lived—
though it meant never seeing your wish
for us to wrinkle up slow into faithful twin 
writhings on our slope of years—you did, 
on one forgettable argument’s thrust, set out 
for Utah I guess, to walk up the ridge
where you hoped you’d find them, bare ancient 
wood warped and gouged and goldened 
in the late light, alive. They’d stand by you,
silent but for wind brushing their skin—
presences surer than this one who misses you
and still imagines the horn-blast, the brights

This piece was featured in Volume 3, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.