Greenbaum is a poet and this is from a book of poems. She helps me out with the opening line, though: “I only have a moment so let me tell you the shortest story”. Do you think she is saying something about the nature of the prose poem? See introduction: not interested.

As a short story this leaves us to fill in a lot of blanks, though we come to understand that much of the speaker’s life is defined by absence. I find it heartbreaking, and often repeat the question in the last line.

First published in Poetry, May 2014, and available to read here. Collected in Spilled and Gone, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019