Don’t Go Thinking You Don’t Need People

By Natalli Amato

For Maria and Alex

You walked from your cottages 
to the stone bench by the waterside 
where I was sitting with my journal. 

We talked about the raised flower beds, 
the floatees that the dogs popped, 
how our grandfathers are hell bent on picking 
good tomatoes and shooting hungry rabbits. 

We stayed that way until the sun was gone 
and the moon was out with Venus;
until it was time for us to retire to our separate spaces. 

None of this sounds like much, 
I know. But before you, 
I was staring at the lake unable 
to hear the bullfrogs over the deep drum
of a lonely heart and lonely thoughts. 

Natalli Amato is the author of the poetry collection On a Windless Night (Ra Press, 2019). Her second collection, Burning Barrel, is forthcoming in 2022. Her writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Darling Magazine, and the Lily Review. She has forthcoming work in Blueline and New York Quarterly, among others. Natalli is a graduate of Syracuse University and she lives in upstate New York.