You Have Repeatedly Compromised Yourself Ashley, Find Your Head Barely Trailing Above Water: The ‘ Drowning Girl ' Syndrome … Poem by Dennis Ryan

Saturday morning, August 31, 2024, begun at 9: 02 a.m. and published at 9: 30 a.m.; Sunday morning, September 1, 2024
at 7: 18 a.m., revisions and dedication

—This poem is for Ashley Testerman of Garner, North Carolina and vicinity, who earned a B.A. in Theatre Arts—so she told me—at Emory & Henry University in 2014.

You have compromised yourself repeatedly Ashley,
and now find yourself drowning, wee drowning girl—
Brad, aka Denny, doing nothing to help—you never
asking for any, preferring to go it alone, yet now
appearing quite desperate … my imagination playing
out the Acts, Scenes of your present personal drama.
You looked only for gain, for taking advantage spending
time with me, knowing all along that ultimately you would
turn and betray me—I knew it all along, yet still endeavored
to instill confidence in you so you could achieve your potential.
(I don't think you ever thought things through to forecast
future consequences, your resulting feelings—drowning
now in your wrongdoing, or so it seems to me. Mayhaps,
however, you have no conscience whatsoever, and just
blow your past history away like needless chaff—knowing
you, I can believe this too. In the end, you are proving
yourself a contradiction not worth my deciphering; soon
enough I will have done … not soon enough however …