Had we mistaken McLean for heaven,
we could’ve been forgiven—
the bright lights, the white walls,
the white rooms, the white coats.
Angels they were not,
but most of them were nice.
I miss the group shares. I miss the movie nights.
Was God watching, too?
Maybe. I don’t know.
Instead of him, I found you both:
Andrew and Ms. Tate,
look how far we’ve come—gowned in green
no more,
each still alive, learning to live this life
before the next.
Jonathan Fletcher holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts. His work has been featured in numerous literary journals and magazines, and he has won or placed in various literary contests. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, he won Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize contest in 2023, for which he will have his debut chapbook, This is My Body, published in 2025. Currently, he serves as a Zoeglossia Fellow and lives in San Antonio, Texas.
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