No Longer Embracing Restraint Poem by William Jackson

I used to be a practical man, temperate.
Embracing restraint, I looked straight ahead.
No one could turn me. I was content.

Now reason has fled,
and I think of you every moment.
I am ruined; it bothers me.

I wish to God I did not care for you!
I feel like the velveteen rabbit in reverse.
Once I was real, earthen, interacting with people.

Now I am wooden; my legs are painted on.
I cannot even move except for my bauble head
that gyrates up and down nonsensically.

And while you do not dislike me,
you will never love me or wake up
thinking of me in the night.

Yet I will silently sit
a velveteen rabbit
infected by your scarlet fever,
waiting to be burned
along with everything else.